Former Mediacorp actor Shane Pow was sentenced to five weeks' jail on 14 July 2021 after pleading guilty to drink driving, his second conviction for the offence. He was also fined $6,000 and disqualified from driving for five years, a fall that cost him his Mediacorp contract months earlier.
Pow, then 30, was caught on 17 September 2020 driving along Java Road towards Nicoll Highway at around 11.20pm when a Traffic Police officer stopped him for a routine check. Reeking of alcohol, he failed a breathalyser test and was taken to the Traffic Police headquarters in Ubi, where tests showed 49 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath, well above the prescribed limit of 35mcg. Earlier that evening, he had drunk about two glasses of beer with friends at an Amoy Street Korean restaurant before driving them home in a van and heading to Bugis to pick up another friend.
Because it was his second conviction, Pow faced up to two years' jail and a $20,000 fine. His first offence dated back to 2014, when he was fined $2,300 and disqualified from driving for a year shortly after obtaining his licence. In court, his lawyer said Pow sincerely regretted his actions and sought a chance to make amends.
The drink-driving charge had already ended his television career. On 26 April 2021, Mediacorp announced it was terminating his contract, citing the second drink-driving incident and his breach of COVID-19 safe-distancing measures at Terence Cao's infamous Daisy Road gathering. Pow was midway through filming the 130-episode drama The Heartland Hero and was replaced by James Seah; he appears only in the first 30 episodes.
Pow served 25 days in jail, spending 21 of them in solitary isolation due to COVID-19 segregation measures for new inmates. He later told local media he read 16 books in prison, including Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix in Chinese, and spent his days reflecting on how he had single-handedly derailed a bright future.
After his release, Pow rebuilt his career as a livestream seller with Mdada, the beauty livestream company headed by Addy Lee, Pornsak Prajakwit and Michelle Chia, and signed with veteran actor Li Nanxing's management agency LNX Global. He has since returned to acting in the Singapore-South Korean film Ajoomma and several Mediacorp dramas, a comeback story that keeps his name in the public eye.
Fellow actor Joshua Tan, an Ah Boys to Men star who has known Pow for around 15 years, publicly backed him on the day of sentencing, writing that Pow would emerge stronger and that owning up to one's mistakes is the greatest virtue. The show of solidarity underscored how the close-knit local entertainment fraternity rallied around Pow even as the industry itself had cut him loose.