JEDDAH, 27 September 2007 — About a month from now, Filipino boy Adnan Catapang would be turning six. But he won’t be around to celebrate his birthday on Oct. 27. He was bumped and killed by a 16-wheeler truck at a place where he should not have been at the time of the accident.
In a report to the Philippine Consulate and in an interview with Arab News, Omar Catapang said he had just returned home in Jeddah’s Hai Summer district from work at an automotive shop nearby at past 5 p.m. when he received a call about his son.
When he rushed to the store, just a block away, Adnan lay convulsing underneath the truck. He said his Sudanese friend, Mansour, who was with the boy, was in a state of shock. Mansour reportedly let go of the boy’s hand to exchange greetings with a friend he met in front of the store. In that split second, the boy slipped on a wet surface and got hit by the truck that happened to be backing off.
“Masyado raw mabilis ang pangyayari (Things happened so quickly),” said Editha Bardoni, the boy’s aunt, quoting witnesses.
The truck driver, a Bangladeshi national, was detained by the police pending investigation of the case.
“We rushed my son to a nearby hospital but doctors were unable to save his life,” said Catapang, a mechanic at the Al-Suhaibani Co.
Bardoni said Adnan, the youngest of two sons, was staying with his beautician mother in Riyadh. But he came to stay with his father in Jeddah during the Ramadan season. Adnan, who is a Muslim, was buried a day after the accident at the Gornatah Cemetery.
