A 50-year-old man has been arrested after allegedly stabbing a man to death following a staring incident. The suspect, Khor Tzoong Meng, worked as a coffee shop assistant in Hougang Avenue 3, where he was known to his colleagues as "Ah Meng".

Khor was off-duty in the wee hours of yesterday morning and drinking at the coffee shop when a customer, Mr Ang Kim Keat, 37, caught his eye, reported Shin Min Daily News.

Mr Ang, before leaving the coffee shop, asked Khor: "What are you staring at?"

Khor then went to a food stall to fetch something - believed to be a cleaver - and followed Mr Ang out of the coffee shop, said the Chinese evening daily.

A scuffle was said to have broken out between the two men after that and there were bloodstains at an electrical room 100m from the coffee shop.

The police said they received a call about the incident at 2.14am.

Mr Ang was found with neck injuries and was taken to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

At Khor's home in Ang Mo Kio last night, his domestic helper, Ms Sriah Kalid Suriono, 39, said Khor had returned home at about 3am and went to sleep.

"At about 5am, the police came to take him away," said Ms Sriah.

One of Khor's colleagues, a coffee shop assistant who wanted to be known only as Mr Jiang, said Khor had started working at the coffee shop about a month ago.

"He was a quiet person...," said Mr Jiang, 50, adding that when he arrived at work at about 6am, police were still at the scene.

Residents in the area told The Straits Times that the coffee shop patrons often drank into the wee hours of the morning.

"Every night, there are people drinking there. They are very noisy, but they never disturb us," said Madam Sharifah Sehon, 55, a cleaner. "It's really scary that this happened."