Could a little Saudi girl forgotten inside a school bus have escaped death had the school contacted her family about her absence in the morning…the school said it did make the call but it just emerged to be a wrong number.
Khowla Mohammed Hussein, 7, was found dead in the bus on Saturday after the Saudi driver locked the vehicle without noticing she was inside.
Doctors at a public hospital in the eastern province of Qateef said Khowla died because of heat, lack of oxygen and anxiety.
The school management earlier said it had tried many times to call the girl’s family in the morning to check her absence but that there was no response. The victim’s angrily rebuffed such claims, saying no call came from the school.
“I can affirm to you that we did try to contact her family on the phone number recorded in our files,” the school owner, Tayseer Al Khunaizi, said, quoted by the Saudi Arabic language daily Alikhbariya on Wednesday.
“We later discovered that the number was incorrectly written…we did our best to call the family but it was an advertent mistake.”
Newspapers on Wednesday said Kholwa was buried in her home town on Tuesday and that the funeral attracted a large number of mourners.
They said education authorities are investigating the school while the bus driver has remained in police custody.
“The driver did the regular searching of the bus before locking it but he could not see the girl…upon hearing the news, he had a nervous breakdown,” the Arabic language daily 'Al Watan' said on Sunday.