During the coroner’s inquiry into the death of American researcher, Dr Shane Todd, yesterday (13 May), his girlfriend, Shirley Sarmiento, a Filipino nurse working at a local hospital told the court that Dr Todd hated his job after he was transferred to the gallium nitride (GaN) research group in the Institute of Microelectronics (IME).
They met each other through an e-dating website called OkCupid not long after they had arrived in Singapore. This was in late 2010. She said that they would see each other almost every weekend.
According to Ms Sarmiento, Dr Todd said he was depressed over his work.
She revealed that Dr Todd had complained to her that he was working in “a dishonest environment”, and “one of his bosses had stolen his team’s idea”.
But he did not give many details into how the idea was stolen, according to his girlfriend.
He was also not happy because most of his teammates were PRCs who spoke to one another in Mandarin, a language he did not understand, she recalled him saying.
Mr Lendrum, an accountant and a friend of Dr Todd said, “Shane also informed me that his team members were not working as hard as he was and that they were not meeting his standards.”
In March last year, Dr Todd told his girlfriend that he wanted to quit, but delayed his departure until he collected his performance bonus.
Ms Sarmiento recalled that, weeks before his death, Dr Todd was “behaving coldly” towards her. Whenever she brought up the topic of him leaving Singapore, he would fall silent.
She said, “He just said that he could not fully explain what he was going through.”
In the final weeks of his life, Ms Sarmiento also noticed that Dr Todd’s hands shook more than usual. In the last few days, his hands shook so much that he would drop things, she said.
Another expatriate friend also testified in court, said, “The twitching was more pronounced in 2012. In my opinion, he was anxious and under pressure.”
The last time she saw Dr Todd alive was the Monday morning of Jun 18 last year, after she spent the weekend at his apartment near Chinatown. When he failed to reply to her messages over the following weekend, she went there around 6pm on the evening of Jun 24.
His apartment door was not locked. She entered the apartment and found him hanging from the toilet door, and screamed. His neighbor Michael Goodwin, alerted by the woman screaming, asked their neighbors to call the police.
Dr Todd’s parents have alleged that he was murdered because of his work at IME, which they said had links to a Chinese firm, Huawei, seen by the US as a security threat.
TR Emeritus
*Article first appeared on www.TREmeritus.com