On 22 September 2010, also the Mid-Autumn Festival of 2010, at a park in Woodlands, Singapore, 32-year-old Hoe Hong Lin, a Malaysian-born Singapore Permanent Resident, was attacked and fatally stabbed in the heart. The killer, 20-year-old Soh Wee Kian, a full-time National Serviceman who went AWOL at the time of the stabbing, was arrested by police while pending trial in a military court for desertion offenses, and charged with murder. It was also discovered that Soh had attacked three more women and stabbed them in a similar fashion as he did to Hoe, after stalking them. Soh, who was found to be suffering from an adjustment disorder with a depressed mood, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of manslaughter for killing Hoe and another charge of stabbing one of his three surviving victims, and sentenced to life imprisonment on 22 August 2013.

Life imprisonment is a legal penalty in Singapore. This sentence is applicable for more than forty offences under Singapore law, such as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempted murder, kidnapping by ransom, criminal breach of trust by a public servant, voluntarily causing grievous hurt with dangerous weapons, and trafficking of firearms, in addition to caning or a fine for certain offences that warrant life imprisonment.