A 31-year-old man died in Orchard Towers on Tuesday morning, July 2, 2019.

Six men and one woman were charged on Thursday, July 4 with his murder.

The accused are:

Tan Sen Yang, 27, Loo Boon Chong, 25, Tan Hong Seng, 22, Joel Tan Yun Sheng, 26, Chan Jia Xing, 26, Ang Da Yuan, 26, and Natalie Siow Yu Zhen, 22.

Charge sheets described the seven accused persons as members of an unlawful assembly.

All seven face one charge of committing murder as members of an unlawful assembly in the prosecution of the common object of the assembly.

If convicted, they could face the death penalty.

All of them remained expressionless when their names were called in court.

Youngest of the lot

The youngest out of the seven is Natalie Siow, who is only 22.

Widespread interest

News coverage of the case and the group’s subsequent arrests have so far been met with widespread interest in Singapore.

This is despite Orchard Towers’ notoriety for recurring vice and criminal activities over the years.

But public interest in this case can be attributed to the relatively young ages of the seven accused persons.

Traction of coverage

Over the course of less than 12 hours, the CNA and Today articles out on July 4 about the accused persons being charged were liked and shared thousands of times.

CNA: Liked and shared close to 12,000 times.

Today: Liked and shared close to 2,800 times.

A CNA video of the van ferrying the accused persons chalked up 50,000 views on YouTube within 11 hours.

Google surge

Starting from July 4, after 6.30am, which was after news coverage of the murder and the arrests broke, Natalie Siow’s name saw an uptick in Google searches.

The full name of Natalie Siow was also picked up by Google Trends, which showed other similar queries for her social media profiles:

Google search in Singapore now automatically completes the search query by suggesting “natalie siow” (even in incognito mode):

More at https://mothership.sg/2019/07/natalie-siow/