Nidhi Lalji Hirani and Ruxmi Premji Vaghjihani, both aged 20, have been identified as the two young students who drowned near Perth, Western Australia.
Dhanji Bhudia, a family friend, told g to Perth Now that Nidhi nad Ruxmi have come to Australia about four months ago to study nursing at Edith Cowan University.
The two friends were on their way to work, at a deli in Ballajura, at about 6.40 am on Sunday when their Toyota Corolla lost control and veered off the road into the lake at Egerton Park.
Nidhi and Ruxmi were trapped in their car after it ploughed into a lake in Aveley.
Ruxmi’s uncle K. P. Halai told Nine News Perth that he received a call from his panicked niece who was trapped inside the car, asking for help. He remembered:
“Nidhi just said, uncle we are drowning, the car is going down.”
According to Perth Now, the first responders rushed to help the two friends as they cried for help.
The first person at the scene who has been only identified as 40-year-old Mr Singh told Nine News Perth that when he arrived the car had completely submerged in the water. He heard the two young women banging on the windows screaming for help.
Mr Singh added that as he cannot swim, he was unable to enter the water to try to save the young women. He further said that as his phone battery was dead, he tried to stop cars to call triple-0.
Mr Singh recalled:
“I stopped two or three cars and we grabbed a spanner,” Mr Singh said.
“I can see the girls starting to bang on the windows by that time. A gentleman who (could) swim, we give him the spanner to go and swim and break the glass. By the time he reached the car, in two or three minutes … it was too late, we could not smash the doors and get things open.”
Mr Singh said police arrived quickly but by then the car had sunk and the two friends who were earlier struggling to get out of their sinking car couldn’t be saved.
Dhanji Bhudia confirmed that arrangements were now underway for their bodies to be repatriated back to Kenya. he said the parents of Nidhi and Ruxmi are in “shock”.
Mr Bhudia added:
“I was a little bit worried about how I would tell their parents … they went quiet for some time and obviously the mum started crying straight away. It was very, very hard to believe that they passed away and the circumstances. Even now we cannot understand that actually happened.”
Nidhi and Ruxmi are remembered as being deeply religious and followed the Shree Swaminarayan Temple in Bennett Springs.
Mr Bhudia said:
“These girls are very, very well mannered, no alcohol, no smoking, we are a very strict religious group.”
The crash is now subject to a probe by major crash detectives. State operations command Inspector Craig Collins told media that it was unknown what caused the car to travel across the median strip and crash into the lake.
