Sanaa, March 09: Twenty-one years after he accidentally drove over a child and then fled the scene, a Saudi man turned himself in.
He said nightmares had plagued him ever since, reports said today.
Yahya Al-Asmari, 38, walked in to the office of the National Society for Human Rights to confess that he killed a small child in an accident 21 years ago in the northwest city of Tabuk, the Saudi Gazette newspaper reported.
He said the child, whom he estimated was under five years old, was one of two trying to cross the road when the accident happened.
“I couldn’t do anything, and I hit one of them but the other was okay,” he was quoted as saying.
“I was so scared that I just drove off as another car stopped to help them.”
He said that afterward he fled Tabuk in fear to the Eastern province.
“Since then I’ve been moving from one job to another and have never found any sort of stability or professional success,” he said.
“And because I didn’t help the child and didn’t own up to what I did, the nightmares have continued to haunt me.
“I spend most of my time in tears of remorse.”
A human rights official said they would check the story and then turn Asmari over to police, the newspaper said.
—Agencies