Kids who die – and the mark they leave on the living

by Wan Ting Koh

WE DON’T know if you’ve noticed but children who have died have been making the news of late. Such events are tragic but significant, or perhaps significant because of how tragic they are. We counted at least six such reports these past two months: the deceased, aged four to 14, had met their deaths prematurely, and who merited comment in the news media. Of the six, the coroner has had to pronounce his verdict on three of them. Mothers were responsible for two deaths while the sixth is a 13-year-old boy in a school uniform who fell from a flat. What do, and don’t, these deaths have in common?

 

Name: Mohammad Airyl Amirul Haziq Mohamed Ariff

Age: Four years old

The most horrific case must be that of this toddler, who suffered at the hands of his mother, 34-year-old Noraidah Mohd Yusof, for what looked like a long, long time. He died on Aug 5 last year, after a series of battering from his mom because he failed to count from 11 to 18 successfully in English and Malay. His mother, a divorcee, stomped on his knees three to four times and pushed him on his chest twice after he made repeated mistakes. After she choked him  and lifted him against the wall by his neck, Airyl started gasping and eventually became unconscious. Four days later, Airyl died in hospital of head injuries, including bleeding in the head, bruising of the scalp and a skull fracture. 

What was shocking was when the court was told about what an autopsy revealed on his body. Airyl’s small frame had collected over 30 old injuries including bruises on his limbs and abrasions on his head and neck. What mother would do a thing like that to her son? Her psychiatrist took the view that Noraidah was suffering from Asperger syndrome and depression. Asperger is a developmental disorder where the patient has difficulties in social interaction and non-verbal communication. But the prosecution disagreed, and said that Noraidah’s family’s accounts to the defence psychiatrist were different from the ones they had earlier given to a psychiatrist from the Institute of Mental Health.

The trial is expected to continue, with another hearing to resolve differing opinions between psychiatrists on Noraidah’s mental state before she is sentenced.

Airyl has an elder sister, who is seven. Nothing is known about her. We only knew that she stayed with her mother and brother and that her mother was due to pick her up from school when the fateful incident happened. We hope she will grow up fine and hopefully, ignorant of what happened to her mother and brother.

 

Name: Undisclosed due to gag order

Age: Seven years old

Imagine being told to get on a stool, look out the window – and finding yourself lifted and pushed out the window.  What’s worse, imagine if it was your mother who did the pushing.  The seven-year-old autistic boy was told to look out the window and watch out for his grandmother on September 13, 2014. He fell nine stories to the ground from his Tampines flat.

Did the mother snap from the stress of caring for him? She has a history with the Institute of Mental Health since 2008, and was suffering from a depressive disorder relapse when she committed the act, the court was told. She had a bad morning, arguing with her husband and having to clean up after the boy who defecated in his pants. She was depressed, exhausted, and having a “cold war” with her husband. The court was sympathetic and she was sentenced to five years’ jail.

It seemed that the family has moved out of the flat, according to a neighbour who spoke to The New Paper. The boy has an elder brother, age 14. He was not at home the morning his brother died; he had been taken to tuition class. Would that he could forget what happened to his family and grow up in the bosom of people who love him.

 

Name: Shina Adriana Hendricks Jones

Age: 14 years old 

When she died in school in October last year, falling four floors from a parapet, word on the Net was that she was attempting a parkour stunt.  But the coroner said in his verdict last Wednesday (April 6) that Shina, a secondary two student from Spectra Secondary School, had volunteered for the challenge of standing on the parapet after overhearing a conversation among her classmates. A group of them was pressuring a male student to stand on the parapet on the other side of the railing. He wouldn’t, but Shina offered to do so.

Shina, 1.54m tall and weighing 53kg, then clambered over the railing on the fourth floor. She landed on the parapet, lost her balance, and fell about 12m to the ground. A teacher attempted emergency resuscitation. She was taken to Khoo Teck Puat Hospital before being transferred to KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital where she died shortly after midnight. Shina has two older sisters, aged 22 and 25.

You wonder about the impact of this tragedy on her classmates, especially those who had been egging on the male student to perform the dangerous stunt. Why did she volunteer to do this? Two schoolmates who were close to Shina told the police that she was not someone who could be easily bullied. So was she attempting to fit in? No one knows, except maybe her classmates who had witnessed her fall. They would have been traumatised. We hope the teenagers have been and will continue to be well counselled.

 

Name: Darien Riley Zabiq

Age: Four years old

Darien fell to his death too, after falling nine floors from his Yishun Ring Road flat in October last year. How do you account for the curious nature of toddlers? Darien tottered past cardboard boxes filled with heavy items placed near the windows, got on a chair, before getting up to the window of the master bedroom. He then used a mirror to bridge the space between the window frame and air conditioner ledge. Then he fell.

His family had moved into the flat just 12 days before. The window grilles were supposed to have been installed earlier but it seemed the contractor had delayed the work. Both parents were not home then. His father acknowledged in an interview last October that the blame lay on him for making a “wrong decision” to leave the child at home unsupervised, but he also said that the lack of grilles “had a part to play too”. The contractor, on the other hand, said that it remained the parents’ responsibility to ensure their children’s safety. Their MP, Law and Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam said he would help the family find “legal recourse” from the contractor. We do not know what has transpired since.

The coroner noted that while there is no mandatory requirement for HDB flat owners to install window grilles, it would be “a rational and prudent safety measure” to have them. Darien was the third of four children, who was described by his parents as a “bubbly and active boy” who loved football, especially team Barcelona. The family is still residing in the flat and the last we checked, the windows were fitted with grilles too.

 

Name: Ng Teck Kiat

Age: 13

Another fall. This time, a secondary two student was found at the foot of Block 183, Jelebu Road, on March 23. Chinese newspaper, Wanbao, reported that Teck Kiat was in his Zhenghua Secondary School uniform when the incident happened at around 10:30pm. He was only 1km away from his school. Nope, he wasn’t home either. Police are investigating.

 

Name: Galen Ong Zi Jie

Age: eight years old

This little boy was caught in the midst of on-coming traffic when crossing the road with his grandfather on Dec 9 last year. The duo had been crossing a T-junction not meant for pedestrians at Eu Tong Sen street. They had taken this route over the past two months. This time, as per usual after a morning swim session, they crossed the road when the lights turned red, but they were not yet on the other side when they turned green. His grandfather, 66-year-old Tan Tiong Him, told his grandson, who was ahead of him, to hurry. He saw an oncoming car approaching in an empty lane and tried to tug his grandson back. He failed. Galen was flung to the second left lane upon impact, while Mr Tan fell on the rightmost lane. Mr Tan survived the accident, but his grandson didn’t. Galen fractured his skull and suffered a brain hemorrhage. He died in the hospital shortly after midnight.

You wonder what the grandpa is going through now. Whether he regretted jaywalking. Whether he regretted not holding on to the boy. We wonder what he said to the boy’s parents after the accident. We wish him well.

 

Featured image by Natassya Diana.

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The post Kids who die – and the mark they leave on the living appeared first on The Middle Ground.

- Wan Ting Koh