IPOH: The wife of Ooi Chee Wei, one of the Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat landslide victims, today identified her late husband's body at the Raja Permaisuri Bainun Hospital (HRPB), here.
District police chief Assistant Commissioner A. Asmadi Abdul Aziz said the woman came from Kuala Lumpur to identify her 39-year-old husband's body.
"The wife arrived at the hospital this evening," he said when contacted today.
Asmadi said another victim, Lee Tze Juin, 32, who is also from Kuala Lumpur, had yet to be identified by her family.
"However, post-mortem examinations on the victims will only be conducted tomorrow at the HRPB.
"The bodies arrived at the hospital at 11.17am today after being retrieved from the debris.
"We need to run Covid-19 tests on them before a post-mortem can be done at 8am tomorrow," he said.
Asmadi said the cases had been classified as sudden death due to natural disaster.
It has now become a standard operating procedure for Covid-19 tests to be conducted on bodies brought to mortuaries before post-mortem examinations can be carried out.
A continuous downpour since yesterday was believed to have triggered the landslide which struck the Banjaran Hotsprings Retreat in Tambun here today, killing two guests.
After almost 10 hours of search operations, the authorities managed to retrieve the body of Ooi at 10.05am and Lee's body 13 minutes later.
The remains were found in the jacuzzi room of the victims' villa, which was struck by the landslide at 1am.
Meanwhile, in KUALA LUMPUR, family members of the victims when met today declined to speak to the media and requested for privacy.
The New Straits Times met one of Lee's neighbours in Kepong, who claimed to be her relative.
"Sorry, we cannot say anything. We are very sad and distressed about the news.
"Thank you for understanding our situation," the neighbour said.
The NST later visited Ooi's house, which is located less than five minutes from Lee's residence.
However, no one was at home at the time.