SINGAPORE: A grieving mother, devastated by the loss of her daughter, calls for mercy and forgiveness, insisting vengeance has no place in her pain.

Tan Chin Shin said she hopes the driver of the van – laboratory technician Woo Jie Yu, 24 – will not face criminal action for the accident that claimed the life of her daughter, Dorothy Naomi Tan.

Naomi, 19, died from her injuries a day after the accident on June 8, 2024.

Chin Shin felt a sense of relief when State Coroner Adam Nakhoda concluded on January 27 that no foul play was involved in the incident.

"I believe this was an accident. Dorothy did not want it to happen.

"The driver did not want it to happen. I think it's enough that one person has paid with her life.

"I don't want the driver to have to suffer and ruin his life. We don't want vengeance," Chin Shin, who attended the coroner's inquiry, told The Straits Times.

Video footage of the incident showed Naomi standing on the footpath next to the two-way road, near the Rising Court building. She was facing the opposite direction from where Jie Yu was coming.

In earlier proceedings, Traffic Police officer Jeff Tan said the teenager didn't check for traffic from the lane the driver was in.

As Naomi stepped onto the road, Jie Yu attempted to swerve right and brake, but the van struck her, throwing her a distance onto the opposite lane.

The driver stopped his van and called for an ambulance and the police. Naomi was taken unconscious to Changi General Hospital.

Subsequently, the family decided to remove her from life support after being told that her brain no longer had any activity and further treatment would be futile. She died on June 9, 2024.

The former student of Raffles Girls' School, who had aspired to follow in her father's footsteps and become a lawyer, was about to start at the Yong Pung How School of Law at Singapore Management University.