AJMAN // A four-year-old Emirati girl died in the arms of her father after the iron front gate at her home fell on her as she waved goodbye to her aunt.
Raya Taresh Al Nuaimi went outside her villa in Al Jurf as her aunt left for work last week and the main gate fell on top of her, said Al Noobi Salem Al Nuaimi, the girl’s uncle.
The family are blaming a bad repair job for Raya’s death, and yesterday filed a police report against the man allegedly responsible for working on the gate.
“About a month ago an old man bumped his car into the door, which led it to fall down,” the uncle said.
“A week after the car accident, my niece’s mother got a man to repair the door and she paid him about Dh2,000, but he only put the door in its place and didn’t fix the screws of the door’s column.”
Raya’s father, Taresh Salem Al Nuaimi, who also has a one-year-old boy, said the family were not seeking compensation by filing the report.
“We don’t want compensation, my girl has gone and this case will be a lesson for him to learn next time to repair damages properly. We did not tell him about what happened because we don’t want him to escape,” the 29-year-old said.
Raya died in the arms of her father 10 minutes before arriving at Sheikh Khalifa Hospital in Ajman.
“About 15 minutes before the accident, we [the family] were having lunch and then I played with my daughter with her iPad. After that, I went upstairs to the bedroom and after two minutes I heard the screams of the maid. My wife ran towards the window. I thought that her aunt ran over her,” the father said.
“But then I saw the maid was trying to lift up the door. I ran downstairs and lifted it up and found my daughter under it. I took her immediately to the hospital.
“On our way to the hospital, while her aunt was driving, I put my hand on her heart and I felt her heartbeat. Then, about 10 minutes before reaching the hospital, I checked again and found her heart had stopped beating. I then told my sister that she had died.”
At the Accident and Emergency Department, doctors gave Raya oxygen and tried to resuscitate her but she could not be revived.
“When they told me she had died, I had a hope that doctors would come back again and tell me, ‘No, she is alive’, but I am patient because it is God’s destiny,” her father said.
Dr Abdel Karim Helmy, head of the A&E department, said that she came to the hospital at 2.14pm last Wednesday suffering from a head injury and bruises on her body.
It is not known whether the repair man has yet been questioned about the incident.
roueiti@thenational.ae
