WHAT HAPPENED
On Monday, Mr Azril had dropped off his wife for work at Park View Primary School, before taking one of Afifah’s younger sisters to school at Pasir Ris Crest Secondary School.
Mr Azril had then intended to drop Afifah off at Temasek Polytechnic, where she was due to participate in a cross-country event organised by her school, before the accident occurred at around 7am.
Mr Kassim said that Afifah usually sits in the front passenger seat of the car but, for whatever reason, did not that day.
“If she sat in front with the seat belt, probably the injury would be lesser and she can survive. That very day she chose to sit behind. I don’t know why.”
Just moments after the incident, 45-year-old petroleum technician Muhammad Rosman Abdul Razak found himself face-to-face with a dazed Mr Azril, who was stuck in the driver’s seat of his overturned vehicle.
Speaking to reporters at the void deck underneath Afifah’s home after offering his condolences to the teen’s mother, Mr Rosman said he was on his way to drop his 16-year-old daughter off at Tampines Secondary School on Monday, and was about two cars behind Mr Azril’s when the incident happened “directly in front of our eyes”.
He swiftly parked his car and rushed on to the scene to find Mr Azril just about regaining consciousness.
Mr Rosman had asked him about his well-being and if he could feel his arms and legs, but said Mr Azril kept asking him to check on his daughter instead.
“My daughter, my daughter is at the back,” Mr Rosman recounted Mr Azril as saying.
Unable to see anyone in the back of the car, Mr Rosman focused his efforts on pulling Mr Azril out of the vehicle and eventually succeeded. Moments later, he found Afifah under some pieces of debris.
“Unfortunately I couldn’t save her, she was already gasping for air and there was blood in her mouth.”
Although he tried to talk to her constantly, Afifah was not able to respond to Mr Rosman, who is trained in providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR).
“I was very helpless, because I am trained in CPR and I couldn’t do it,” he said, explaining that he might have made her predicament worse if he had done so.
According to family members, Mr Azril is currently under observation with kidney and spine related injuries, and is conscious in the hospital.
