The day an Il-year-old did not come home from school

Suicide can be highly impulsive act with young people more vulnerable: Psychiatrist

- Joyce Teo Senior Health Correspondent

The day he died, Goh Yong Le was taken out of class and questioned by two teachers in the conference room about taking a classmate’s belongings the previous week.

He cried three times that day. Shortly after the school day ended, he took his life. He was 11.

In 2024, the year Yong Le died, there were 314 suicide deaths, a provisional number that will be updated in 2026.

Still, for the sixth consecutive year, suicide remained the leading cause of death among young people aged 10 to 29 in Singapore, a persistent and tragic trend.

In a recent interview, Yong Le’s father, who requested anonymity to safeguard the privacy of his family, said his son sobbed when he was asked to find the missing item, which he had apparently hidden in the school’s garden.

He and his teachers could not locate it, and it is unclear whether Yong Le had actually taken the item.

He was subsequently asked to write a statement about what he had done, and his school bag was searched. He became upset and cried again.

He then returned to class to complete a practice paper before attending another class.

After the last lesson of the day, the boy was asked to apologise to his classmate outside the classroom. He cried a third time.

His father, 42, said that their family was blindsided and that the boy did not have depression.

According to the teachers, he stopped crying each time and he appeared “okay” after that, said his father, a former software platform architect, who now trades on the United States financial markets at night.

Together with his wife, 40, who is a homemaker, he has two other sons, the eldest of whom is on the autism spectrum, and two daughters. Yong Le was the second of five children.

There was a call that day, but the teacher could not reach the parents by phone and texted to ask for a good time to call.