Seven Days

Dubai, Jan 5: A mother and her young daughter had a brush with death when their car fell from the second floor of a car park in Sharjah - but miraculously the pair escaped with relatively minor injuries. The accident occurred after 34-year-old mother, Mervat A, returned from a family party to their apartment in the Al-Ta’awen area of the emirate with her four-year-old child Yasmin in the early hours of New Year’s Day. As she went to park, the mum accidentally pressed down the accelerator instead of the brake and her 4x4 went careering through the iron railings and over the edge.

As the vehicle hurtled towards the ground it flipped over and landed on its roof. “The mother went up to the second floor to park the car but she pushed on the fuel accelerator instead of the brake,” a police officer with Sharjah Police told 7DAYS yesterday.  “She was shocked when the car went through the net and fell two floors to the ground,” he added. One of the other residents at the building said they heard a huge crash as the car hit the floor. “We heard a big noise and we thought that one of the nearby building under construction collapsed. But when we went out, we saw the car upside down and the little girl was yelling asking for help,” he said.

The horrified neighbours immediately called the police who arrived within minutes to free the dazed pair. “We transferred the mother to Al-Kuwaiti Hospital because she was suffering from slight injures, and we took the little girl to Al-Qasimi Hospital as she was suffering from some broken bones in her arms and she needed surgery,” the Sharjah Police source said. A spokesman for Al-Qasimi hospital confirmed: “She has broken bones in her arm and some other minor injuries and she will stay in the hospital for the next couple of days to finish the tests and so we can supervise her.”