‘You be a good boy’: Final words Lorong Lew Lian fire victim told neighbour’s son

Just hours before he died in a fire at his Serangoon flat, a 68-year-old man stopped to offer a few words of encouragement to his neighbour’s son.”Don’t worry, you be a good boy, and you will achieve good things in your life,” he told the boy on Tuesday (Sept 1) morning.They would be the last words Siti Aisyah Abdul Rahman, 46, remembers hearing from the elderly neighbour she had known for about eight years.Later that afternoon, a fire broke out in his third-floor unit at Block 8 Lorong Lew Lian.The man was found unconscious and taken to hospital, where he later died, police said.Speaking to Asiaone, Aisyah said the loss was difficult to process, given how frequently they had crossed paths over the years.”For the past eight years, almost every day I see him and we acknowledge each other,” she said.”What makes me more sad is that today, this morning before I left for work, he actually acknowledged me.”‘At first I thought it was incense burning’When Aisyah’s mom, Zaitun Idris, first smelled smoke outside her Serangoon flat on Tuesday (Sept 1), she thought someone nearby was burning incense.