In a heartbreaking event in Lipis, a young Orang Asli man lost his life during a gold panning activity when a sudden collapse of soil engulfed him.
The incident occurred in the early hours of the morning within an oil palm plantation at Kampung Pos Pantos, Sungai Koyan, according to Kosmo.
The 18-year-old, a resident of Kampung Pantos, ventured to the location with four companions when the tragedy unfolded.
The group was engaged in gold panning near a concrete culvert at the site around 3 am when the victim, using his hands to dig, was tragically buried by a mound of earth that gave way.
Superintendent Azli Mohd Nor, the Lipis police chief, detailed that the village headman of Kampung Pantos reported the accident to the Sungai Koyan police station around noon.
Victim’s friends tried to rescue him
Efforts by the victim’s friends to rescue him were immediate, pulling him from the pile of soil and rushing him back to their village, approximately 3km away from the scene of the accident.
Despite their swift response, the young man’s life could not be saved.
His body was transported to Lipis Hospital, where a post-mortem confirmed he succumbed to asphyxia due to the landslide.
Authorities investigating the site found no evidence of machinery typically used in gold mining, indicating the group’s reliance on manual methods.
This tragic incident marks the second fatality linked to gold mining activities in Lipis within a year, following a previous accident in July where a 44-year-old man died under similar circumstances at Sungai Kadir in Kampung Sungai Temau.
