Three Dead: Family Offered $500

Photo: Phnom Penh Post

A car careered into a boy aged eight and two girls- sisters- one also eight, the other twelve. They all die. Six others are seriously injured.



The car was being driven by a 23 year-old female medical student. She had just knocked a motorcyclist off his bike and having hit-and-run was (allegedly) trying to evade the police.

Yesterday, more than 100 Phnom Penh monks walked the strip of Norodom Boulevard where the chase and deaths took place.Family and friends gathered, distraught, at the crash site.

And the family of the suspect joined proceeding, too.

"They have come to ask for forgiveness for their child and asked me to take money in exchange for the complaint against their child," said the mother of the two dead girls.

And how much did they offer for the dropping of charges against the young woman who had already knocked one off his bike and then plowed into many more, killing three youngsters?

Five hundred dollars. Just five hundred lousy dollars.

Now, it's probably natural that the parents of the accused are attempting to get their child out of a fix, especially in Cambodia with its god-awful prisons. And money does talk here.

But are the wealthy here- and it appears the family ain't poor as the car involved was a late model Camry and the father is deputy-director of a major hospital- so callous, so blind to human misery, so cold to their poorer Cambodian countrymen, that they believe they can buy their way out of justice so cheaply?

It would appear so.

Five hundred lousy dollars. Lousy bastards.