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A devastating fire broke out on Tuesday morning at a residential area in Tasek Gelugor, Penang, destroying three houses, five cars and four motorbikes. The incident was believed to be a targeted Ah Long attack.
In a Facebook post shared by Mohamad Asrul, one of the victims of the fire, he noticed a visible petrol and paint splash at house number 5 and 3 (his home) in the morning of 16 June.
He also noticed a threatening note left on the neighbour’s front gate along with a bottle containing left-over petrol.
The message was clear and scary: “Pay your debt or your house will burn.”
But the twist was, the letter was addressed to a totally different house, which was further down the street, with the borrower’s full name and IC number included in it.
The real problem was, the Ah Long had splashed petrol on the wrong houses.
Feeling worried by the discovery, Asrul went to the police station that same morning to lodge a report. After taking his statement, the police told him to go home and wait for them to come and collect evidence.
However, after hours turned into days, they allegedly never came.
Turns out, the note wasn’t just an empty threat
At 4am on 24 June (9 days after the police report was lodged), the homes were set ablaze.
Asrul and his family were asleep when they were awakened by the sounds of car horns and shaking of their gate as neighbours tried to alert them about the fire.
Thanks to his neighbours’ fast response, Asrul and other neighbours managed to escape safely. According to him, an explosive device was thrown into one of the houses, triggering a huge explosion.
“Someone else took the loan but we’re the ones paying the price,” Asrul wrote at the end of his post, clearly frustrated with the situation.
However, despite the incident, Asrul remained thankful to everyone who stepped in to help, including the firefighters, police and all the people in his neighbourhood.
Assistant Director of the Fire and Rescue Operations Division, Pulau Pinang Fire and Rescue Department (JBPM), John Sagun Francis said that his department was alerted to the incident through an emergency call at 4.52 am.
“The fire was completely put out at 5.59 am and monitoring was completed around three hours later,” he added.
However, the cause of the incident and total losses are still under investigation, as reported by Bernama.
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