Port Dickson tragedy: Nephew recognised uncle’s crushed car in viral video
Rescue personnel at the scene of the accident at Port Dickson. Photo: Social media
SINGAPORE — When a friend circulated a video of a bad traffic accident via WhatsApp, the licence plate number of the Singapore-registered car caught Mr Niezam Ab Rasid’s eye.
The number was familiar and he then recognised the Honda Stream as belonging to one of his uncles. Soon, family members began calling one another frantically. “All of us were very shocked, and are trying to find answers to what had happened,” the 42-year-old told TODAY on Thursday (Jan 4).
His uncle Rosli Samad, 54, who owned a motorcycle workshop in Kaki Bukit, was on holiday with his wife Maimunah Sapari, 51, and their children Nor Amalina Rosli, 20, and Dayana Sarah Rosli, 18, when a tipper truck crashed into their car on Wednesday at Port Dickson on Malaysia’s west coast.
The three women were killed on the spot, while Mr Rosli, who was at the wheel of the car, died en route to hospital.
Amalina was a student at Republic Polytechnic, while her younger sister was studying at ITE College East. The four had left Singapore in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
Mr Niezam, who declined to reveal his profession, said that their bodies are expected to reach Singapore Thursday night and they would be buried on the same night.
The two surviving sons of the family, civil servant Muhammad Asyraf, 27, and Muhammad Hamka, 24, who works in his father’s motorcycle workshop, were not with their parents and two sisters on the trip. They are “devastated” and are “still trying to come to terms with their loss”, Mr Niezam said.
“At this point in time, everybody is just holding on as best they can. We have tears here and there, but everybody is just holding on because the deceased are yet to come home,” he added.
Besides the four Singaporeans, five others were injured in the accident, which happened after a driver lost control of his tipper truck, based on findings from preliminary investigations reported by the Malaysian press.
The fatal accident saw the truck slam into a motorcycle and three cars, one of which was carrying the Singaporean family.
Photos posted on social media showed their car completely crushed under the truck.
A report by The Star newspaper said that the Malaysian fire and rescue department took almost two hours to extricate the victims from the wreckage, and a crane had to be used to lift the lorry from the crushed car.
The 54-year-old truck driver later turned himself in to the police, TODAY understands.
When asked about his memories of the family, Mr Niezam said that he would remember his uncle as an honest man. “One of the things he reminded his son (to do) is to be honest in all our dealings with (the motorcycle workshop’s) customers. We remember him as a good man, an honest man,” he said.
Wednesday’s accident was the latest in a string of mishaps involving Singaporeans abroad in recent months.
In December, there were four reported accidents. The first one occurred on Dec 11, when a Singaporean driver was killed in a head-on car crash in New Zealand that injured two others.
On Dec 21, a Singaporean woman travelling with her sister died in a traffic accident in South Africa. The following day, a family of four travelling in a car was involved in a fatal head-on collision with a van in Arizona, United States. Only one of the four survived.
On New Year’s Eve, a Singaporean couple died when their motorcycle skidded across a wet road in the southern Phatthalung province of Thailand, flinging them into a ditch.
CLARIFICATION: In an earlier version of this story, we reported that one of the deceased, Dayana Sarah Rosli, was a student with ITE College West. Her family has clarified that she was studying in ITE College East.
