Rishard Khan

On­ly An­nan Boysie knew his mo­ti­va­tion for at­tempt­ing to brave flood­wa­ters on Thurs­day which ul­ti­mate­ly cost him his life.

Ac­cord­ing to one of the men who tried to res­cue him, Boysie was warned against at­tempt­ing the dri­ve but dis­re­gard their calls.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Hunters’ Search and Res­cue Team mem­ber Mark Chin Ale­ong said he was on his way home and was stopped by the flood­wa­ters. He said while wait­ing it out, he met Boysie on the road.

“The ve­hi­cle ap­proached dri­ven by the now de­ceased, Mr Boysie. We cau­tioned him not to try to go in­to the depths of the wa­ter or try to nav­i­gate to the oth­er side of the road but he didn’t heed our cau­tion and he waved us off and de­cid­ed to con­tin­ue dri­ving,” Chin Ale­ong said.

He said he wit­nessed Boysie get in­to dif­fi­cul­ty just 15 me­tres af­ter leav­ing where they were stand­ing.

“With­in a cou­ple of min­utes the van was danc­ing all over the place be­cause the wa­ter had al­ready tak­en con­trol of the ve­hi­cle and that is when we re­alised he was in dif­fi­cul­ties and there was no re­cov­ery from that for him to come back on­to the road,” he said.

It was then, he said, Boysie and his Isuzu D-Max pick­up went in­to the riv­er.

“We were hop­ing that he would have tried to es­cape the ve­hi­cle by jump­ing out but that didn’t hap­pen,” Chin Ale­ong said.

He said in less than a minute, the ve­hi­cle dis­ap­peared un­der the wa­ter. It was at this point that Chin Ale­ong gath­ered help from oth­er by­standers to at­tempt to res­cue Boysie.

Ty­ing one end of a rope to him­self and the oth­er to a truck, Chin Ale­ong dove in­to the rag­ing flood­wa­ters.

How­ev­er, he said they had dif­fi­cul­ties try­ing to find the ve­hi­cle in the murky wa­ters.

“I even­tu­al­ly found the...hood of the ve­hi­cle. On stand­ing on the hood of the ve­hi­cle, the wa­ter was at least two and a half feet over the hood al­ready, so there was lit­tle time to try to help Mr Boysie,” he said.

Chin Ale­ong said the truck dri­ver joined him in the wa­ter and to­geth­er they made sev­er­al at­tempts to open the doors and break the van’s win­dows with a ham­mer but were un­suc­cess­ful.

“At that time, a cou­ple of min­utes had al­ready elapsed so I was hop­ing there was at least a pock­et of air that he could have breathe but I went down again try­ing to break the glass, an­oth­er per­son tried to help me break the glass but noth­ing worked,” he said.

“So, at that point, I had to make the con­scious de­ci­sion to save my­self (and) in­stead of be­ing res­cue, it would have been a re­cov­ery.”

Chin Ale­ong said if it was not for the men on the road­way pulling him in with the rope, he too might have drowned be­cause of the strong cur­rent.

He said this was when they called po­lice, Fire Ser­vice and search and res­cue teams. He said he went back in­to the wa­ter lat­er to as­sist the Fire Ser­vice in re­cov­er­ing the ve­hi­cle and Boysie’s body.

Chin Ale­ong said he was deeply sor­ry for the tragedy but not­ed that the sit­u­a­tion could have been avoid­ed had Boysie heed­ed the warn­ings.

“He did not have to die. He did not have to brave that wa­ter. But con­do­lences goes out to his fam­i­ly, friends, loved ones, well-wish­ers. It is sad. I feel for any­body that is go­ing through this but it could have been avoid­ed and I stand by that ... if he had on­ly take heed to our cau­tion,” he said.

—Rishard Khan