KOTA KINABALU: Family members and relatives of Li Yong, the 26-year-old tourist from China who died while vacationing on Mantanani Island in January, have urged the police to expedite their investigation on the victim’s cause of death.
The victim’s cousin, Mickey Xia Jing Wang, said the police investigation had been slow, and families and relatives were still awaiting the result of the investigation.
“We need to know how he (Li) died. There couldn’t be no news at all (on the investigation) when a China tourist died here,” he said in a press conference here yesterday.
Li’s body arrived at Wenzhou City in Zhejiang Province with a transit in Hong Kong via Dragonair on Tuesday.
Xia is the cousin of Li’s father. A press conference was called by Xia, along with Li’s brother-in-law Ren Liguang and cousin Steven Fang. The trio arrived in Kota Kinabalu on January 28 to manage the procedures.
Also present were representatives from Basel Christian Church of Malaysia (BCCM) in Likas, including pastor-in-charge of BCCM KK Chinese, Reverand Eric Wong and BCCM Chinese Council member Kong Yu Kiong. A cousin of Xia in Kuala Lumpur hooked them up with BCCM Likas.
Xia said the aim of holding the press conference was also to address the inaccuracies of the report in the Chinese newspapers, and proceeded to elaborate on the incident leading up and after the death of Li.
Xia said Li and his wife, together with two other couples, all in their 20s, arrived from Kuala Lumpur to Kota Kinabalu via AirAsia on January 24.
Li, who is a manager in an automobile company in Wenzhou City, married his wife last year and has a daughter of less than six months old. Their daughter did not join the trip.
On the same morning, a local travel agent brought the three pairs of couples and other tourists to Mantanani Island.
Xia said a tourist guide also asked the tourists to sign a waiver of liability and indemnity agreement upon arriving at the jetty heading for Mantanani, which was not written in Chinese.
“They (the three couples) do not understand English or Malay.”
The tourists arrived at the jetty at 9.36am and the three women went to the toilet, he said.
“When they came out from the toilet, the men had signed the waiver agreement and the women followed suit.”
As they reached Mantanani Island less than an hour later, the three couples told the employee on the island that they did not know how to swim.
The employee divided the tourists into two groups, those who could swim and those who could not.
Li went snorkeling first while the others joined him later. He was reportedly wearing a life jacket during snorkeling.
“Within minutes after they went snorkeling, the employee ordered all the tourists to come up.”
Soon after, Li was dragged from the water to the jetty and employees performed cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) on the victim while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
“When there was still no sign of the ambulance after some time had passed, the tour guide sent Li to the hospital.
“At 2.53pm of the same day, Li was pronounced dead.”
Xia said Li’s wife and the other two couples panicked and helpless during the whole ordeal, as there was a language barrier.
They eventually received counseling in order to cope with the tragedy.
Following Li’s death, Xia said a police report was lodged, albeit a brief one due to the language barrier, adding that the police did not ask much about the details.
“We hope the police will expedite the investigation because we do not know how he died.”
Upon a lawyer’s advice, the tourists went back to Kota Belud police station to make a more detailed statement. Xia lamented that they could not understand the police statement as it was written in Malay.
As for now, Xia said the first priority for the family was to prepare for Li’s funeral.
“After that I will return to look into the case,” he said, adding the family reserved the right to take legal action.
Meanwhile, Kong said the post-mortem on Li ruled out external factors that caused his death, including diseases and jellyfish poison.
On the other hand, Xia expressed his gratitude towards Gerakan national vice president Tan Sri Liew Yun Fah, Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Malaysia, and General Consulate of the People’s Republic of China in Kuching, Ministry of Tourism, Culture and Environment, Assistant Minister of Tourism, Culture and Environment Datuk Pang Yuk Ming and BCCM Likas volunteers who assisted them in this matter.