“I was upside down, stuck and in shock. For a split second, I felt like giving up”: The driver swallowed up by the Tanjong Katong sinkhole

Since July 26, 2025, when news broke of a sinkhole appearing on Tanjong Katong Road, swallowing up a car and its driver in one terrifying moment, she has only been known as “the sinkhole lady”.

She did not need the publicity or the attention, she says, and declined all news interviews.

Now, almost six months later, it is time.

Her name is Pearlyn Lim. And she is ready to tell her story.

“It was surreal. I thought I was dreaming”

At about 5.50pm on July 26, Pearlyn, 43, was driving home after dropping off some friends. They had just been to visit their childhood chum who had had a baby at Thomson Medical. Thoughtfully, Pearlyn offered to send her friends home after the visit.

It had been a busy day, and she was looking forward to a quiet dinner with her then 13-year-old daughter, Anya.

At a junction in Tanjong Katong Road, she halted at a “stop” sign held up by a worker near a construction site. Numerous cars passed her by as she waited for the traffic to clear.

Just as she started to drive off, there was an odd bounce in the road. A sudden shout of: “Stop, stop!” made her jam on her brakes. In disbelief, she saw the tarmac before her buckle and crack, dropping in broken chunks into a black hole that widened rapidly until it touched the wheels of her car.

Her black Mazda hatchback tilted left and slid into the yawning hole, taking a horrified Pearlyn with it.

“It was very surreal. I thought I was dreaming,” she told Salt&Light. “And then I realised, no, I’m not dreaming. I am going down.

“At that moment, I remember crying out, ‘Please, God, don’t leave my daughter alone in this world.’”

All this flashed through her head even as her car slid in surreal slow motion down into the deep, dark hole, debris raining around her, until the car landed upside-down three metres below.

“When the car landed, the bounce shook me, and I think survival instinct kicked in,” said Pearlyn. “The first thing I wanted to do was to reach for my phone to turn on a light. It was dark because I was underground and debris was still falling. My car windscreen had cracked and water was gushing in. I had to hurry to get out. So I left my phone to feel for the car handle.

“Thank God, the debris didn’t block the door and thankfully the seat belt wasn’t stuck. I managed to unbuckle myself and wanted to get out of the car. But I realised that both my feet were stuck – one was stuck under the pedal, the other was stuck underneath the seat.”

An overhead shot of Pearlyn’s car disappearing into the sinkhole last July. Photo from social media.

With her heart pumping painfully, Pearlyn paused.

“I was upside down, I was stuck and I was in shock.

“There was a split second when I felt like giving up. As humans, sometimes we wonder what it’s like to come face-to-face with death. It was not fear I felt. It was overwhelming sadness at the thought of not seeing my loved ones again. At that moment, I really, really missed Anya.”

Troubled childhood

Pearlyn does not speak of sadness lightly. A child of unmarried parents, she grew up well acquainted with the emotion.

Her father made money by producing satay for distribution. “He was always broke, but he had many visions of success, going into one business or another,” she said.

Pearlyn as a child (second from right), growing up with her three stepsisters.

In her earliest memory, her father was stirring satay gravy in a pot so big, he used a spade. When he was not using the spade to cook, he was using it to hit her mother. Sometimes her three stepsisters, from her mother’s previous marriage, would be the ones who fell victim to her father’s rage.

“There is this peaceful scene in my memory though  – I was still a toddler and was lying on a mattress between my mother and father. They were quietly watching TV together. I clung to that one memory.”

After a few uneasy years, her father fled to New Zealand. Before he did, he forced her mother to choose between keeping the house and her three older daughters, but giving Pearlyn to her paternal grandparents, or keeping all her daughters but foregoing the house.

Her mother was left with no choice but to keep the house because she could not have cared for her daughters with no roof over their heads. So young Pearlyn found herself shunted to her paternal grandparents’ home.

“Life with my grandparents was bittersweet,” Pearlyn recalled. “My grandmother was a housewife, taking care of 13 children. My grandfather was a Chinese physician. They doted on me, but because my parents were never married, not all of my dad’s siblings accepted me as family. My father, who was the oldest, also had money issues with some of his siblings. That, coupled with the fact that my grandparents had so many grandchildren to take care of, meant that there was sometimes no room for me.

Although her paternal grandfather (seen here) and grandmother doted on her, little Pearlyn was constantly being moved to different relatives’ homes.

“So I was always moving – sometimes it was to this aunty’s house, sometimes to that uncle’s house. My entire life’s belongings were in four NTUC Fairprice plastic bags. Every time I moved, I would take those four bags with me.”

This was Pearlyn’s life from the time she was in preschool to the time her father abruptly returned from New Zealand.

Trauma after trauma

“I think I was in Primary 4 or 5 when my father returned,” Pearlyn said. “I had not heard from him the entire time he was away. I don’t even know who, if anyone at all, gave my grandparents money for my support.”

Upon his return, her father got married and started another business. Pearlyn was taken to live with her father and stepmother in Bedok. Between his new business, his new marriage and, shortly after, a new child, he hardly had time for Pearlyn. She hung out with other kids at the void deck, picking up what she called “bad habits”.

Her father introduced her to cigarettes and beer when she was 11.

From time to time, her mother and stepsisters would make an effort to meet with her at her school or take her out. Even though her sisters were just young adults – 11, 10 and five years older than Pearlyn – they were protective and loving towards their little sister.

During that time, her second sister, who was a Christian, took Pearlyn to church for the first time. Hearing about God at Hing Hwa Methodist Church, her eyes were opened to the possibility of a different kind of life from the haphazard one she was living.

“I decided to leave my father’s house and move in with my sisters and Mum. So one day, in the early part of my Primary 6, I packed my stuff while he was at work. When he came home, I told him I was going to find my mum.

“He was so mad, he took off his belt and started whipping me. My stepmum stepped in to protect me and we both got whipped until he got tired and he made me kneel infront of the altar.”

Despite her father’s wrath, a determined Pearlyn moved in with her mum. As she started secondary school, she had no lack of friends.

In Secondary 2, she met a boy – a foreigner who was three years older. They started dating and often hung out at his house which was within walking distance of their school. One day, when his mother was not at home, the boy forced himself on her.

“I remember trying very hard to push him away, but he was so much bigger. I remember shutting my eyes, the way I shut them when my dad used to beat my mum.”

In spite of the trauma, Pearlyn did not stop seeing the boy – “I don’t know why” – until he was sent to Boys’ Town for misdemeanour.

At 13, Pearlyn (second from left) made good friends in school. But tragedy would strike the following year.

“After that I changed. I became very rebellious and didn’t want to listen to anyone. I was too ashamed to turn to God because I felt I had let Him down when I stayed with the boy who ruined me.”

By the time she was 16, she had had multiple boyfriends.

She dropped out of church but, in her heart of hearts, she never stopped believing in the God who had comforted her and given her hope at her lowest points.

After her graduation from polytechnic at the age of 22 and with two years of work experience under her belt, she packed her bags once again, and left to study in Australia with the aid of student loans.

Returning to Singapore with a Bachelor of Commerce, she married her colleague at 28. It was when she became pregnant with a precious baby girl two years later that she began to return to God’s Word and draw on His promises.

The pregnancy was complicated – she started having contractions at 21 weeks and was on bedrest for the rest of her pregnancy.

“As I lay in bed, I would sing to my baby and read the Bible to her. One morning, my mother-in-law who was from another religion, sat on my bed, held my hand and said, ‘I hear you; you have a lot of faith in your God. If your God can protect my grandchild and bring her into this world healthy, I will believe in Him and accept Him as my God too.’”

When Baby Anya was born at 36 weeks, she weighed less than 2kg. “But she had healthy lungs – when she screamed, the entire nursery didn’t have peace!” said Pearlyn, smiling. “God had kept her safe.”

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