LIM CHU KANG BURNS CASE: SUICIDE I thought she was a ghost By Lee Tee Jong THE setting was eerie, like a scene out of a horror movie. It was night and a sea of tombstones could be seen along Lim Chu Kang Road. Out of the dark, a naked woman stumbled out from the Chinese cemetery. Madam Ang Suan Sim, 40, a businesswoman, started waving her hands frantically and tottered towards an oncoming van. The startled driver, Mr Ng Choon Chuan, 28, was a salesman on his way to his fishing haunt at the Lim Chu Kang kelong. When he blinked to take a second look, his van had overtaken the woman. In a phone interview with The New Paper, Mr Ng said in Mandarin: 'I was afraid. I thought I had seen a ghost.' It was around 9pm on June 12. His van was the only vehicle on that long stretch of road. He was curious, so he made a U-turn. That was when Madam Ang spread out her arms to signal him to stop. He noticed that she had nothing on except for a collar around her neck and bits of cloth stuck to her thigh. Seconds later, she collapsed by the side of the road. Mr Ng called the police. He said: 'She was facing the ground and groaning in pain. Her skin was charred. I stood about one metre from her as I did not know what to do.' By then, a crowd of taxi-drivers had gathered. Then, Madam Ang spoke. She told Mr Ng in Hokkien to call shifu to come collect her body. Gasping for breath, she was coherent enough to give the monk's telephone number. Shifu (master in Mandarin) is Venerable Guang Rong, a monk who shared her terrace house in Telok Kurau. In June, The New Paper had reported that in her will, she had left him her $920,000 house and her car. According to an investigation report, Madam Ang's body was covered with burn marks that smelled of kerosene. Nearby was her gold Mercedes-Benz, engine running and petrol cap off. Inside were puddles of liquid smelling like kerosene, a disposable lighter and seven empty kerosene bottles. Madam Ang died two days later at the Singapore General Hospital (SGH) from severe burns. Lim Chu Kang cemetery, as it turned out, is where her mother is buried. DEPRESSED Madam Ang, who was depressed and suicidal at times, had sought treatment at the Institute of Mental Health. Last year, the divorcee reportedly invited the monk, an old acquaintance in his 40s, to live with her. She had no children. Her maid had helped to load a bag of kerosene bottles and bottles of brandy into the Mercedes' boot that June afternoon. Later, police found several suicide notes written by Madam Ang at her home. On Oct 11, the coroner recorded a suicide verdict. We contacted the monk but he declined comment.