Local singer Nat Ho's father has gone missing. (Photo: Nat Ho's website)
Local actor-turned-singer Nat Ho has taken to Twitter to ask for help to find his missing father, whom he fears may be on the verge of suicide.
In his first tweet — which was published at around 4pm on Monday — Ho wrote, "My dad may be depressed & left a suicide note. He's left home w/o any form of contact. Pls tag me his whereabouts pls".
The tweet, which was accompanied by a photo of his father, was then re-tweeted by actors George Young and Randall Tan as well as local bloggers Xiaxue and Benjamin Lee. At press-time, it has been re-tweeted over 3,000 times.
Nat Ho's father (Photo: Nat Ho's Twitter account)
A few minutes later, Ho followed up with "No, this is not a joke. Much help appreciated. His name is Shih Meng or Daniel".
Ho, 27, told Yahoo! Singapore in a phone interview that he was alerted to his father's disappearance through an e-mail from the latter titled "Goodbye forever" with its contents looking like a suicide note.
Sensing that something was amiss, he then alerted his mother to check on his father. According to him, his parents had just gone out for lunch earlier and nothing was out of the ordinary. His mother did not realise her husband was missing as she had been doing laundry.
"I rushed home [after reading the e-mail] and we don't really know where to find him because he left everything behind including his wallet, iPad, phone and passport and house keys," Ho said. He added that it's possible his father may have brought an EZ link card along with him.
In subsequent tweets, Ho described his dad as being 1.68m tall, weighs about 73kg and left from Jurong East, possibly wearing a black T-shirt.
Ho, who sounded calm throughout his conversation with us, said his family is "trying to be as calm as possible" to explore all leads for his father's disappearance.
"Normally, I don't like to spread this kind of things to the media, [but] between saving face and doing this (tweeting his father's disappearance) so that more people can look for my dad and potentially save a life, then I'm willing to do so," said Ho, who has also alerted the police about his dad's disappearance.
Ho said his dad had been unemployed for the past few months and that may have sparked his father's depression.
But can't find him. I hope he will be safe.