Anger over Sabahan subjected to chokehold
Published on: Monday, November 06, 2023
By: Sherell Jeffrey
Left: The Sabahan pinned to the ground by applying pressure to the neck. He had trouble recovering from the ordeal. A similar act by a US cop using his knee resulted in death within 9 minutes (right).
Kota Kinabalu: Several clips have emerged on social media showing a Lalamove e-hailing rider from Sabah being beaten and subjected to a dangerous chokehold while on delivery duty in Kuala Lumpur.
Lalamove is an e-hailing food delivery service like Grab and Foodpanda.
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The clips showed the young man being held to the ground by a man twice his size, while a woman (filming) kept yelling at the bigger man to free him.
However, the man kept pinning the rider down by the neck while restraining the rider’s other arm on his (rider’s) back despite the rider’s crying out in pain.
It revived memories of the chokehold on George Floyd, a black, by a white police officer in Minneapolis, USA, in 2020 in which the victim died from suffocation in less than 10 minutes.
The police officer and others were jailed.
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At one point, the victim said the problem was between him and the security guard who is a foreigner, to which the assailant replied that he (victim) must also be a foreigner as he spoke Malay with a different accent.
The videos drew numerous reactions from social media users. One of the postings, presumably by the woman who engaged the e-hailing service, claimed that the building’s security guard had refused to let the rider leave since the latter wasn’t allowed to pass through the lobby area.
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The woman claimed she requested that the rider be allowed to go and accepted full responsibility for requesting that the rider pass through the lobby to drop off her parcel.
However, the security guard refused to let the rider go, forcing the rider to lunge at the security guard and resulting in an argument.
This prompted the bystander to join in by holding the rider to the ground and refusing to let go until a staff from the office building stepped in.
According to the woman’s posting, the rider appeared to suffer from hyperventilation and trouble moving following the commotion, probably due to restricting blood flow in his neck.
Checks on the Lalamove Facebook page account revealed multiple posts from law firms offering to represent the rider in the matter.
A post on the e-hailing company’s Facebook page also displayed a photo of the rider and his attacker together after allegedly “settling” the dispute.
Five people have since been called in to facilitate investigations under Section 323 of the Penal Code, according to a statement issued by Dang Wangi police on Nov 3.
The statement quoted Dang Wangi Deputy Police Chief Supt Naazron Abdul Yusof as saying that they received a police report at about 2.34pm on Nov 3 regarding a viral video on Facebook showing an incident involving a fight in front of a business premise in Persiaran Tun Razak, Kuala Lumpur.
Preliminary investigations found that the incident happened at 3.20pm on Nov 2 between an e-hailing rider and an individual which was caused by a misunderstanding.
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