PASIR GUDANG: "I cannot believe I lost my youngest child in a blink of an eye. The incident could have been avoided if the school van driver was more careful.
These were words from Karmin Kahil, 39, whose five-year-old daughter died after being hit by the van outside her home in Bandar Seri Alam yesterday.
The housewife said she could not forget the heart-wrenching incident involving Nurhafizah Nulkin, 5, who she last saw at 6.40am yesterday when the girl was going to school.
She said Nurhafizah and her elder brother Muhammad Afieq Miqhael, 6, would normally call out her name when they arrived home after coming down from the school van.
However, yesterday, she only heard the voice of the school van driver.
She said the woman who drove the van asked her to come out to look at her daughter who was lying motionless at the time.
"She apologised repeatedly. She said she hit her and that she needed to go because she needed to send the other children home. A neighbour helped me send my daughter to the health clinic and then my daughter was no more," she told Berita Harian when met at her home today.
She said the incident caused her son to become traumatised because he had seen how his sister was hit by the van.
"He cries every time he sees a photo of his sister or whenever we talk about the incident. Nurhafizah underwent a post mortem at Sultan Ismail Hospital and she was confirmed to have suffered from internal bleeding on her head.
"We leave it to the police to investigate it and take action based on the law," she said.
Nurhafizah and Afieq both study at SK Seri Alam 2. Nurhafizah began riding the van to school earlier this year, while her elder brother began taking the transport last year.
Karmin, who is from Sabah and has been living in Johor for 20 years, said she and her husband Nuljin Delson, 41, who is a welder, accepted what happened
to their daughter.
Nurhafizah was laid to rest at the Cahaya Masai Muslim cemetery at about 6pm yesterday.
Earlier, Seri Alam district police chief Superintendent Mohd Sohaimi Ishak said the 50-year-old van driver detained yesterday to assist in the investigation of the incident had been released on police bail today.