UNLIKE most students who achieved 5As in the Ujian Penilaian Sekolah Rendah (UPSR) examinations, Muhammad Asyraf Safe’e isn’t in the mood to celebrate.

This is because two days before the results were announced, Asyraf, a prefect, chose to celebrate the end of the school term — by leaping off the second floor parapet of the stairwell at his school on Tuesday. As a result, he was left nursing a broken ankle in hospital.

The Year Six pupil of Sekolah Kebangsaan Seri Selangor in USJ 4 was celebrating Children’s Day with his friends. They had held a party to mark the end of their studies. Asyraf said two of his friends had each jumped from the first floor “just for fun”. Upon seeing his friends complete their jumps unscathed, Asyraf thought he could do better — by jumping from the second floor.

However, he broke his ankle upon landing on the concrete floor. His teachers rushed him to University Malaya Medical Centre where he has been warded. “It was supposed to be a fun thing since we are going to leave primary school. I never thought the jump would hurt me,” he told The Malay Mail at the UMMC orthopaedic ward yesterday. However, it will take a long time for him to live down the incident as his jump had been immortalised on camera. “One of my friends recorded the incident on a digital camera. However, I can’t watch it as the camera is with a teacher,” he said.

Asyraf said he wasn’t provoked or challenged into doing the deed, and maintained that it was his own decision. “No one challenged me. I wanted to jump off a higher floor after seeing my friends doing it,” said Asyraf.

Asked about his 5As achievement, Asyraf said he was happy with the result, but expressed disappointment at not being able to collect his results in person. He admitted that it was a foolish thing to do. “I regret what I did. It should never have happened,” he said. He will undergo surgery at 10am today.


Earlier, his father, Safe’e Aliman, 48, a former lecturer, dismissed the notion that his son could have been bullied into jumping. “Asyraf probably wasn’t bullied. He’s pretty big, probably bigger than other boys his age,” he said. Asked about the incident, he said: “I wasn’t there at the time. However, his teacher showed me the recording of the incident. It seemed that he jumped on his own accord.” He said his son had always been obedient and was never a trouble-maker. “I’m thinking of sending him to a boarding school so that he will become an independent person.”