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HEARTBREAK: The grief-stricken mother (in orange shirt), sister (left) and younger brother (in green shirt) of Mr Goh being comforted at the scene. -- ST PHOTO: SHAHRIYA YAHAYA
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THE rescue diver had been groping about in the watery darkness for more than half an hour when he touched what felt like a pair of legs.
He had found the body.
His find inside the rear compartment of a submerged 24-footer truck sank a family's hopes that Mr Goh Chin Went, 21, was still alive.
He was one of three workers loading fish into the back of the truck on the shores of the Strait of Johor at around 11am yesterday, when the vehicle rolled backwards and slammed into the water.
The handbrake and rocks used as wheelchokes apparently did little to stop it.
Mr Goh's two colleagues, who managed to jump out and climb onto the roof of the truck, survived. But Mr Goh was trapped in the hold when the hydraulic gate in the rear closed.
The pair screamed and flailed their arms even as the truck sank, alerting people in the nearby fish farms.
A boat from there picked them up just before the truck sank with Mr Goh still in it.
His body was to be found and brought to shore nearly three hours later.
The day had started out ordinarily for the three employees of Sheng Siong Supermarket. Taking delivery of fish from the farms floating off Lim Chu Kang was something they did up to three times a week.
One of the survivors, Mr Chua Kim Swee, 54, said he parked the truck at the end of Bahtera Track off Lim Chu Kang Road, with the vehicle's rear facing the rocky, sloping shoreline.
They were loading the fish when the accident happened. The water rushed in fast and soon reached knee-level in the hold, as currents swept the truck out to deeper waters.
Mr Chua said he and Mr Yong Chee Seng, who is in his 20s, climbed onto the roof of the truck using its hydraulic gate for a leg-up. They screamed at Mr Goh to do so, but he did not.
Mr Edmund Ching, 33, who works on his father's fish farm, sped out in his boat on hearing the men cry for help.
From the two survivors' choppy accounts, he gathered that one more man was still in the truck, so he grabbed a pair of goggles and dived in. But his efforts were in vain.
Even rescuers from the Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF), with their equipment, did not have it easy: The truck could not even be found at first amid the strong currents and 5m-deep waters.
Mr Goh's father and some Sheng Siong colleagues who turned up saw divers from the SCDF going down to look for the truck; other rescue crew members cruised on a dinghy, dropping weights into the water to locate the truck.
Below the surface, visibility was down to a ruler's length, but the truck was finally found at about 1pm.
As the search progressed, the rest of Mr Goh's family sped to the scene from Johor, only to be told that his body had been found.
When the body was confirmed as Mr Goh's, his mother threw herself on the ground, screaming in Mandarin: 'My dear, do you know how much I love you? Mama loves you. How can this happen? You are just in your 20s, I want to die with you!'
Mr Goh's younger brother sat slumped at the foot of a tree, crying: 'Brother, don't die.'
tracysua@sph.com.sg
joolin@sph.com.sg
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