Three foreign students die in head-on collision

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This article was published 19/02/2021 (1849 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A “really tight” community of Winnipeg students is dealing with the shocking blow of a car crash that killed three young men from Bangladesh near Arborg Thursday.

RCMP said the students were travelling southbound on Highway 7 at 6:20 a.m., when their vehicle collided head on with a northbound car driven by a 53-year-old woman, seven kilometres south of Arborg.

The three men, two of whom were 23 years old, were pronounced dead at the scene. The age of the third male was not known.

The woman, from the Rural Municipality of Armstrong, was taken to hospital in Winnipeg with serious injuries.

On Thursday night, Tahbit Dewan, president of the University of Manitoba’s Bangladeshi Student Association, said he’s been close friends with the three students for more than three years.

He identified them as: Al Numan Aditta, Risul Badhon, and Aranoor Azad Chowdhury.

Dewan said he’s struggling to come to terms with such a sudden loss, having spoken to the men recently.

“I had been in contact with them last week, actually,” Dewan told the Free Press.

“It’s still unreal that I will never be seeing them around or talking to them about sports or whatever’s going on. It doesn’t feel right.”

The three were always together, Dewan said.

The men were well into their studies — Chowdhury was a science student, Aditta was in agribusiness, Badhon was attending the Asper School of Business — and were known for being friendly, giving and kind, he said.

“They were my oldest friends I had when I landed in Winnipeg as an international student,” Dewan said. “I’ve never seen them sad or upset about anything. They were always so positive.”

Dewan said he has been in contact with the families.

“They are quite in shock — most of them had a conversation (with them) last night,” he said. “In Bangladesh, there’s a 12-hour difference. Yesterday morning, all three families had conversations with their sons. And six or eight hours later, they heard the news that they are no more.”

There are some 600 Bangladeshi students at the U of M, and the community is “really tight,” Dewan said.

It is the second tragedy to hit in a month: Sami Uzzaman, 24, who was found dead in the Fort Garry area after being missing for nearly three weeks in January, was also a Bangladeshi U of M student.

“It’s just back-to-back bad news, it’s really affecting us,” Dewan said. “We are taking it hard, honestly. It’s taken a toll on our mental health. It’s too early to say how everyone’s doing, but I can’t say it’s good.”

The U of M Muslim Student Association is grieving three active members, who gave so much to the student and wider community in Winnipeg, group president Abdul Ahad said Thursday.

“A lot of us are really emotional, because we have such incredible memories for them, so it’s really emotional for us,” he said.

Ahad knew all three, and said he’ll always remember them fondly: Chowdhury as a dedicated MSA volunteer and gifted soccer player; Badhon as a cheerful and supportive confidante for many; and Aditta as the first to offer help to anyone in need.

“International students, we don’t have any family here, so our friends are our family,” he said.

“It’s unbelievable, it was really heartbreaking for me and for everyone in our circle,” he said.

Ahad also referred to the death of Uzzaman a month earlier as a painful reminder of how important it is to keep contact, even through a pandemic, with the people you care for.

“Right now, what we’re trying to do as a community, is trying to connect with everybody. We also learned a lesson from the death of Sami Uzzaman… so we try to stay connected with everybody to make sure everybody’s safe,” he said.

The RCMP are investigating.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: malakabas_