S'porean's kneecap 'cracked into two' in Johor tour bus accident

Man recounts horror of waking up to pain when vehicle crashes in heavy rain

- Elaine Lee

In the early hours of Dec 27, Mr Jeremy Chua awoke to pain from a severely injured kneecap, in a coach that had turned turtle on the North-South Expressway in Malaysia.

The 27-year-old Singaporean and his girlfriend Sandar Tun, 26, were in a tour bus headed from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur when the vehicle skidded off the highway in Johor and crashed onto a grass patch. It was 3.54am at the time.

“Most of the passengers were asleep when the crash happened,” said Mr Chua, who had booked the coach ride through a third-party booking website. “The pain was bearable, but I was in shock for a moment because I was also sleeping then.”

He added that his girlfriend bumped her head in the crash.

According to Mr Chua, a financial consultant, the coach had cleared the Malaysian checkpoint at around 3am on Dec 27, and the accident happened about an hour later near Kulai, at the 41.3km mark of the highway.