SINGAPORE - Former top “mamasan” Mona Koh, who was shot twice in 1994 and left paralysed from the waist down, has died at 80.

She died at home on July 15 from kidney failure, according to Shin Min Daily News.

Popularly known as “the queen of nightclubs”, Koh was one of the best-paid mamasans in the business, according to a Straits Times report on Oct 19, 1994.

At 7.40pm on Oct 15, 1994, Koh was shot twice in the lift lobby of the now-defunct Katong People’s Complex in East Coast Road.

She had been on her way to the hairdresser that night, something she was known to have done almost every day for about six years, according to the ST report.

Koh, then 46, was shot in the face and back.

One bullet was removed from her nose. But the other was lodged between her spine and liver, and could not be removed. According to previous reports, doctors told her the bullet had so devastated her spine that she had only a 5 per cent chance of survival if it were removed.

Koh, who was single and had two adopted children – a boy aged 10, and a girl aged two at the time – was left permanently paralysed from the waist down.

The shooter was never caught.

Koh got her start in the hostessing business by moonlighting as a social escort while working in a hair salon after quitting school, according to the ST report.

In 1970, she joined the nightclub circuit as a manageress, and then became a mamasan.

In 1983, she opened Singapore’s first disco run by an all-women management, according to an ST report published on Aug 9, 2005. 

At the time of the shooting, one of the places Koh was working in was the Lido Palace Nite-Club in Concorde Hotel in Outram Road, according to the Oct 19, 1994, ST report.

After the shooting, Koh continued her work as a m...