RAWANG: “I thought I heard sound of a goat but when I looked down from the bridge, I saw a child holding on to a pole,” said Muhamad Ashabudin, who rescued one of the children in the Bukit Beruntung drowning incident today.
The 26-year-old Bangladeshi was passing by the area, when he heard a cry for help, which he first thought sounded like a goat.
Ashabudin said he immediately went to his farm nearby to get a rope to pull the victim in.
“I threw the rope towards him. He grabbed it but the rope kept slipping off his hands.
“I then asked him to wrap the rope around his right hand and once he did that, several of my friends and I managed to pull him up,” he said when met at the scene.
The rescued boy has been identified as Muhammad Shahir Azman.
As Shahir was pulled up from the retention pond, he told Ashabudin that his friends were washed away.
Earlier today, eight children aged between 10 and 13, are believed to have been fishing at the retention pond when they were washed away by sudden gush of water.
So far, only Shahir survived the incident.
As of 10.15pm, the rescue team have found four bodies.
Search is underway for the remaining three victims.