A MAN in his mid 20s - missing from home for a week and who set online car forums talking about his whereabouts - was found dead on Saturday.
He was reclined in his grey Mazda RX 8 on the fifth level of a multi-storey carpark in Jurong West. The person who found him at 10.45am called the police and later made a posting in a car forum about it.
The police are investigating the case as an unnatural death, but it is understood that no foul play has been suspected.
The man's family filed a missing person report on Jan 28, and went online to appeal to contributors to car forum www.RX8 club.com for help in locating him.
A sibling of the man, going by the online moniker 'm31hu1' or Meihui, said in an early posting: 'My brother has been missing since Jan 27, around 2am.
Last seen at Boat Quay by his friends, wearing a Giordano polo T-shirt and jeans. Not sure if he was wearing his black cap or not.'
The entry added that he was not contactable as he had left his cellphone with a friend.
Meihui's other postings revealed that the family last saw him on the evening of Jan 26.
'I'm not sure why he is doing all this. He didn't say anything when my mum and I last saw him. He just said he was going down to Orchard,' she wrote.
It is understood that the appeal for information on his whereabouts then spread to car forums such as www.subaruclubsg.com
In response, forum contributors posted pictures of what looked like the missing car. One posting which said the car was seen on Sentosa sent the man's family on a wild-goose chase to the island last Tuesday.
The forum contributor who eventually found the man's body told of what happened in a posting. He said he had just parked his vehicle on the fifth level of the Jurong West Street 65 carpark when he saw the car, which he recalled seeing there the previous week.
He was admiring the car's body kit when he saw a parking summons dated Friday stuck on the windshield. When he peeked into the car for a look at its interior, he saw the body reclined in the driver's seat. The key was in the ignition.
He called the police.
When The Straits Times went down to the scene yesterday afternoon, the Mazda was still there, but cordoned off by police tape.
The car was dusty, and its driver's seat was still reclined. A brown comb lay there. On the front-passenger seat were a grey-and-white striped cushion and a plastic bag containing two notebooks.
The driver's side of the car had scratches, and its lights on the front right side were damaged.
Residents living near the multi-storey carpark told The Straits Times that people rarely went up past its fourth level.
The man's family held a wake yesterday in Bukit Batok.
The man's father, who wanted to be known only as Mr Toh, would only say that the entire family was extremely saddened by his son's death.
He declined to talk about the incident or about his son.
