Man Who Kicked Boy in Yishun Playground Jailed; Boy Has to Visit a Psychologist

If you’ve remembered, a video of a man kicking a child in an indoor playground went viral last year.

The video has since been removed at the request of the playground owner, who has provided the victim’s mother with the footage.

With courtesy from Mothership.sg, here’s the incident broken down in several gifs:

Since then, the mother of the victim has made a police report.

Yesterday, the verdict of the case is out, and the man’s jailed for a week.

What Happened

Based on the video, we can only see that the boy was pestering the man, presumably for a toy.

And as expected, it all started because the helicopter parent was defending his children.

Apparently, the victim, who’s autistic, had wanted a toy. Or several toys. He was alone and unsupervised by his parents.

The man then stood between the victim and his children in an effort to protect his children.

However, the victim got a tad aggressive and hit the man, who lost it and kicked the young victim in his abdomen.

The victim did not give up; he proceeded to grab the man and hit the man again.

This time, the man totally lost it and hit the victim, scolding the victim.

Finally, a woman, believed to be the victim’s mother, came in to take the victim again.

Now, of course, it can be seen that the victim was the one who started it all, but it’s a child we’re talking about.

If a baby is unreasonable, do you just microwave him? No? Same logic.

Man’s Defence

As expected, the man’s defence is that firstly, he wasn’t aware that the victim was autistic and that he would have been more understanding should he know that.

And secondly, the man was merely trying to protect his own children, though he might have overreacted.

Apparently, the man had offered compensation to the victim’s mother, but she refused it.

Victim Referred to Psychologist

It seems like the victim wasn’t just hurt physically.

After the incident, the victim was taken to a polyclinic the next day and was diagnosed with tenderness over his sternum and upper abdomen.

He was also so traumatized that he had sleeping problems and nightmares following that, and was referred to a psychologist.

The Deputy Public Prosecutor (DPP) has some advice for the man: when the victim had turned aggressive, he should have approached the playground owner or looking for his caregiver instead of taking matters into his own hands.

He could have been jailed for up to two years, or fined up to S$5,000, or both, for voluntarily causing hurt to the young boy.