A 26-year-old woman, who was five months pregnant, was killed after a car driven by a learner driver struck her directly last Saturday in Palmerah, West Jakarta. A CCTV recording of the tragic incident has been circulating on social media as of late.
Hari Atmoko, who heads West Jakarta Police’s traffic unit, said the driver, a 29-year-old woman identified by her initials FMS, has been named a criminal suspect in the case.
Police are still investigating the incident, and said FMS was learning how to drive when she crashed the vehicle and hit the victim, who has been identified by her initials SR.
“The suspect was learning [to drive] a car, she had only driven twice,” West Jakarta Police’s Traffic Unit Chief Hari Atmoko told Detik yesterday.
Separately, Jakarta Metro Police’s Law Enforcement Unit Chief Fahri Siregar said FMS mistook the accelerator for the brake pedal. FMS, who does not hold a driver’s license and was accompanied by her husband, initially parked the car on the side of the narrow street. SR was crossing the street to approach her husband, who was waiting on his motorcycle parked not too far in front of the car.
The car lunged ahead and carried SR for a few meters until it collided with an electric pole, with the pregnant victim wedged in between. FMS, along with other witnesses, brought SR to a nearby hospital soon after, but, sadly, both SR and the child she was carrying did not survive the incident.
A witness named Ansor, who was SR’s coworker at a car repair workshop near the location of the incident, said SR was pregnant with her first child after five years of marriage. Both SR and her fetus were buried in her hometown in Pati, Central Java.
FMS was charged with vehicular manslaughter caused by negligent driving, which is punishable by a maximum sentence of six years in prison.
The suspect was initially detained for five days at the West Jakarta Police station, but she was granted temporary suspension of detainment due to “humanitarian reasons,” as she has reportedly been cooperative with authorities as well as having three young children who required her care.
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