DID the driver disappear after leaving him at the mall or was it just miscommunication?

Either way, the accident landed a 7-year-old in hospital with a broken leg.

On 25 Nov, Tan Linjun was involved in an accident with a car along Bishan Street 14.

The driver of the car did not leave the scene. Instead he helped the boy into his car and drove him to a shopping mall.

There, he asked Linjun to go to the toilet to wash his own wounds. He said he would wait for the boy in the car.

But Linjun claimed that the driver disappeared after dropping him off at the mall.

The boy added that he lost so much blood that he fainted.

POLICE REPORTS

His upset father has lodged two police reports and is still awaiting the outcome. Police said that they are investigating the incident.

According to Linjun, after the accident with the metallic blue car, his left leg was bleeding profusely.

Linjun had just had judo lessons at the Bishan Sports Hall and was on his way to the Bishan Swimming Complex further down the same street for swimming lessons around 4.20pm.

Linjun told Lianhe Wanbao: "It hurt so much I had to hop around on my left leg. The driver got off the car and asked me to get in. He kept looking at my leg."

According to Linjun, the driver, a man in his 30s in a round-necked T-shirt and pants, drove him to the basement carpark of Junction 8, in Bishan.

In his statement to the police, Linjun claimed that the driver told him to get out of the car and to wash his wounds in the mall toilet.

Linjun said: "As soon as I alighted, he drove off."

Linjun, who was hobbling on one leg, asked to borrow a stranger's handphone to call his father, Mr Tan Jianchun, 44.

But he fainted just after dialing his father's number.

Mr Tan, an assistant nurse, said he received a call at about 5pm that day with news that his son had fainted. He had no idea that the boy had been in an accident.

He called his wife and told her to rush to the mall.

She took Linjun to Tan Tock Seng Hospital, and he was later transferred to the KK Women's and Children's Hospital with a bruised and swollen right foot, and some internal bleeding.

He was discharged two days later and was given 12 days' medical leave.

X-rays later showed he had two fractures on his foot.

Mr Tan made a police report.

Mr Tan said: "It was only after my wife arrived at the mall that we found out about Linjun's accident.

"How could the driver leave my son at the mall with his wounds?"

The police have found the driver, and Mr Tan said he understood that the driver's account to the police was different from his son's.

Mr Tan said he was told that when his son did not re-appear at the basement carpark, the driver assumed he was all right, and decided to drive off.

Mr Tan made a second police report on 8 Dec, refuting that account.

In his statement, he reiterated his son's claims that the driver had fled, leaving Linjun in the lurch.

Said Mr Tan: "My son has been very independent since he was 5. He attends various classes outside of his school curriculum on his own, such as swimming, judo, badminton and ping-pong and so on.

"But now he's lost a lot of confidence. And his nightmares, with him screaming, 'Dad, a car's after me,' have been heart-wrenching."

Come January, Linjun will not be starting school.

The incident has affected him so much that he is now receiving psychological counselling and is on an additional three month's medical leave.

His mother has taken a month's no-pay leave to care for him.