Singaporean killed, another injured after car hits them in Johor during reunion supper

A trip to Johor Baru by six Singaporean friends to catch up with each other over supper ended in tragedy.

Two of them were hit by a car as the friends, who had known each since Primary 1, were walking to their car after their meal last Friday.

Mr Justinian Tan, a 25-year-old student at Kaplan Singapore, died from his injuries yesterday.

Financial consultant Brandon Thenerd Yeo, also 25, broke his left thigh bone and has since been discharged from Gleneagles Hospital in Singapore.

The friends had organised the gathering in a coffee shop near New York Hotel at Jalan Dato Abdullah Tahir after two of them came back from overseas.

They were walking back to their car around 3am when a car hit Mr Tan and Mr Yeo from behind.

The others escaped unhurt.

One of them, Mr Joshua De Rozario, 25, said the driver of the car drove off instead of stopping to help them.

He told The New Paper yesterday that he saw Mr Yeo spin backwards from the impact and was flung metres away.

"The car narrowly missed another of our friends," he said.

"I went to Brandon first to see if he was all right, and he was conscious. I looked across and Justinian was frantically moving his arms, so I went to help him."

The two were brought back to Singapore in a private ambulance last Friday afternoon.

Mr De Rozario said Mr Tan suffered a concussion and was pronounced brain dead on Sunday.

His parents kept him on life support for a few days so his friends could bid their last farewell, including some who had flown in from the United Kingdom and Thailand.

Mr Tan died around 12.45am yesterday in the Singapore General Hospital after he was taken off life support.

Mr Yeo told TNP over the phone: "It was only a matter of seconds. If only we had ordered more food, or stopped to take a group photo... It was not worth it. For one meal, I lost a friend."

The friends had known each other since they were at St. Gabriel's Primary School.

Mr De Rozario said they had reunited after he and another friend returned from their studies in Australia after two years.

He recalled how Mr Tan had skipped classes to visit him at home five times a week for five months while he recovered from an operation.

Friends posted tributes on Mr Tan's Facebook page yesterday.

One of them, Mr Pithawas Phipathananunth, wrote: "You made me know what a friendship is like... You played a very important part of our childhood. Wish we had more fun times together."