‘I was there, yet did not see him’
A factory operator drove past the scene of the accident for several days and nights but still could not find his missing son – until the dreaded call came yesterday.
MERSING: Factory operator Nik Arif Nik Mansor drove around for days and nights, looking for his 21-year-old son who went missing on a road trip to Terengganu.
His eldest son Nik Shakir Zufayri, who studied at Institut Sains dan Teknologi Darul Takzim, had driven off last Wednesday night with three of his friends.
They were supposed to drop by at the house of Nik Shakir’s aunt in Kuantan to pick up a cousin for a camping trip in Bukit Gambang before heading to Terengganu because three of them had never been to the east coast.
When they did not turn up at the aunt’s place, their families began looking for them.
Yesterday, the dreaded call came from the police.
The Honda Accord, which the four young men were in, was found in a river just a kilometre away from Felda Tenggaroh here.
It is believed that the car hit a road barrier before plunging into the river at around 11.30pm that fateful night.
“I am upset with myself. It never crossed my mind to search at the river. We had looked all over the route from Seri Alam town in Johor Baru to Kuantan,” said Nik Arif, 46.
In fact, he passed the scene several times, unaware that tragedy had struck there.
“We were looking or them, hoping they were safe and sound,” he said, adding that Nik Shakir was familiar with the road to the east coast.
Nik Arif said his family always used the same route each time they returned to Kelantan and his son was the “co-driver”.
“He had been asking permission from me to use the car as he wanted to take his three friends to Pulau Redang for a short vacation.
“Later, he cancelled the trip to the island due to strong waves. So he decided to take his friends to Kuala Terengganu as they had already made preparations for a trip and he did not want to disappoint them,” he said.
Another parent, Intan Molek Mohd Yusoff, 50, never thought that her youngest son, 21-year-student Abu Izzani Abu Bakar, would leave her for good.
The housewife, who was sobbing at Mersing Hospital yesterday, said she had been very close to him as he was the youngest of three children.
The other two victims were supermarket worker Luqman Jainie and Muhammad Asyraf Isa, who was a student at Akademi Saga in Shah Alam.
A mutual friend of the four men, Mohd Nazrin Idham, 21, said it was heart-wrenching to have lost his buddies just like that.
“I was especially close to Luqman. We were friends since our primary school days. We lived quite near to one another. We met each other often,” he said.