Under-fire television host Quan Yifeng has been interviewed by
police for six hours, following a much-publicised run-in
with a taxi-driver.
The 36-year-old arrived at Bedok Police Division headquarters on
Friday at close to 4pm on Friday and only emerged six hours later
at 10pm.
The Straits Times reports that she told reporters
outside the police station in Mandarin, “Thank you for being
here, thank you for your concern. You have been working very hard,
and I apologise for making you wait.”
When asked, the tired-looking star declined to say why she
took so long to give her statement and left in a grey Mercedes.
Yifeng, who has hired top criminal lawyer Subhas Anandan
to represent her, is involved in a huge dispute with a Comfort
Delgro taxi driver named Mr Chan, who has accused her of thrashing
his taxi when he refused to help her load her luggage into the
boot.
In addition, the 52-year-old cabbie claims she hit him,
locked him in the taxi, ripped out the fare meter in his cab and
even poured water on his belongings before leaving in another
cab.
She, meanwhile, says that Mr Chan had swung the taxi’s door on
her, hitting her on the back and leg.
ComfortDelGro is backing the taxi driver involved in the
incident. The company has described Yifeng’s incident as
an “act of aggression”.
The case has put Yifeng front and centre in the media spotlight
for the past week. Close to 3,000 Yahoo! Fit-to-Post
users have given their thoughts on the case.
While the majority believe Yifeng is to blame, some also
sympathised with her and called for police to conclude
their investigations.
User Pretty One said, “All of us are 2-sided coins. The
nice side and the ‘Incredible Hulk’ side. The TV showing (sic) the
nice side of Yifeng and the cab-driver saw the Incredible Hulk side
of her. It could be a misunderstanding between the two of them. Let
the police settle it.”
Some users have also compared the case to a battle between the
rich and the poor.
Poor commented, “This is a fight about the rich
and the poor. Yifeng managed to get the No. 1
top criminal laywer in singapore… It is time to see if
Comfort-Delgro will protect interest of the poor taxi drivers.”
Another user Lee added, “I have no reason to believe
that the taxi driver would do all the damages to his taxi… and if
she really kicked that poor old taxi man and messed up his
taxi, then what a wild and uncivilised woman she is! And doing
that in front of her daughter!”
Yifeng, a popular Taiwan-born TV host, is
well-known for her quick temper and sharp tongue.
In 1996, the star, who split from her ex-actor husband Peter
Yu two years ago, was involved in a fight with a bowling alley
attendant and was fined S$1,000.
According to a Lianhe Wanbao report, the
recent incident began when Mr Chan failed to
help the host with her luggage. Quan reportedly flew into a
rage and demanded, “What sort of service attitude is this?”.
The driver claims that he did not help the star because he
was recovering from an elbow injury.
Driving away from Hua Xin Court Condominium where he picked
Yifeng, her 11-year-old daughter and a male friend up, he asked for
directions to the airport, to which Quan allegedly snapped, “Are
you from Malaysia? Don’t you know the way to the airport?”
Tensions reportedly reached boiling point when
the driver braked hard at a junction and the star was thrown
forward. The cabby said that Quan accused him of doing it on
purpose and swore at him in Hokkien. She then insulted his
mother and proceeded to shove and hit him, he told the paper.
With his word against hers in this dramatic case of
he-said-she-said, it’s anyone’s guess whose version of events is
true.
But one thing’s for sure – the beleaguered star will
be steering clear of taxis for quite awhile.
