Teen held over rape attempt

GEORGE TOWN: A 15-year-old boy was caught and beaten up by a security guard after he and an accomplice tried to rape a 28-year-old woman in a public toilet at the Komtar bus terminal here.

The woman, who works with an express bus company, had earlier gone to the first-floor toilet at around 9.15pm on Saturday when the two rushed in and threatened her with a knife. It is learnt that after demanding for her belongings to be handed over, they started fondling her private parts and threatened to kill her if she shouted for help.

However, when the woman spotted a male cleaner enter the toilet, she screamed, causing the duo to run off. A security guard, who waited at the exit after hearing the screams, managed to nab one of them.

Zainol Mat Saad said he hid behind an escalator to wait for the duo to run past him as it was near where the only exit was. “I managed to grab the boy but his accomplice ran off with the woman’s handbag,” said Zainol, who works with the same company as the woman, adding that the victim lost a handphone, necklace and RM50.

He said the boys might have been working in cahoots with another woman as the victim had told him that she only used the toilet when she saw the other woman enter it first. “But shortly after the woman left, the boys rushed in and closed the door,” he said. The victim lodged a report at the Patani Road police station.

George Town OCPD Asst Comm Gan Kong Meng said the boy, who was sent to the Penang Hospital for treatment, had been placed under remand for four days. “We are looking for a man and a woman to facilitate investigations,” he added. Komtar assemblyman Ng Wei Aik said he would ask the Penang Development Corp­oration to fix panic buttons at the toilets in Komtar. “We have installed 50 closed-circuit television cameras in the building but it is impossible to fix them near the toilets,” he said.

Chief executive officer to PDC Setia Urus, which manages Komtar, Sabarul Aswadi Abdul Jalil said he would check if any of the CCTV had captured images of the duo.

Source: TheStar Newspaper, 19 April 2010