Penang woman crushed to death by container called mother with dying breath

BUKIT MERTAJAM - Crushed under a cargo container, Ms Lee Zi Rou summoned the last of her strength to call her mother.

“Mummy! It hurts so much!” the 21-year-old woman gasped into her handphone.

Her mother, 42-year-old Lim, frantically asked her daughter where she was but was met with silence.

“I sensed she had died,” said Ms Lim in a video interview recorded by China Press at Ms Lee’s wake on Nov 14.

Ms Lee died when the car she was driving was crushed by a container at the Jalan Bukit Tengah traffic light junction.

The container had toppled onto and crushed her car when a lorry negotiating a sharp left turn went out of control.

Another car also hit by the container was not as badly damaged.

However, its driver Tan Chou Theng, 25, was seriously injured and rescued by passers-by and sent to the hospital.

Ms Lee’s mother said she had told her daughters to only text her for non-urgent matters.

“I told them that if they call, it means there is an emergency. So when she called, I felt fear,” she said tearfully.

Ms Lim said she immediately told her other daughter to drive her through the route Ms Lee usually takes to work.

She said calls to her went unanswered.

A man who finally picked up the phone told her Ms Lim had been crushed in the accident and told her the location.

She said when she arrived at the location, she frantically begged bystanders to help rescue her daughter.

“But it was impossible. The container was too heavy.

“She called at 9.24am and my daughter had died by 9.30am,” she said.

At the Magistrate’s Court in Penang on Nov 14, Magistrate Harith Mazlan issued the remand order on the 51-year-old lorry driver for four days until Nov 17.

Local police had earlier said that the driver was being investigated for causing death by reckless driving, which is punishable with up to 10 years’ jail, a fine of up to RM50,000 (S$15,000) and disqualification of the driving licence for between 10 and 20 years.