Grandparents of Dutch model consider adoption in struggle to move on

GEORGE TOWN: At Hendrik Smit’s home in Batu Ferringhi, a marble urn containing some of his granddaughter’s ashes sits in a corner, a grim reminder of how Ivana died two years ago at the tender age of 18.

Almost every day, his wife Ho Sioe Tjoan places fresh flowers in a vase next to the urn and lights several candles around it.

Hendrik, 80, and Ho, 79, raised Ivana from a young age in the Netherlands. When they migrated to Penang in 2002, Ivana, then three, was sent to live with them as well.

Her death in 2017 left a bleak hole in their lives, turning their once-lively home sombre.

“We are lonely, just the two of us here,” Hendrik said in an interview with FMT.

He and Ho are hoping to adopt a young girl to help them get over their granddaughter’s death.

“If someone was here, filling the empty spot left by Ivana, that would be nice. It’s like starting all over again.”

He said he and his wife had been looking for a baby girl to raise, “maybe two or three years old, just the same age as Ivana when she moved to Penang with us”.

Ivana was found dead on the balcony of a sixth-floor apartment unit in Kuala Lumpur on Dec 7, 2017.

She had reportedly been out drinking with an American-Kazakh couple in Bangsar before returning to their apartment on the 20th floor.

Police classified the case as sudden death pending the results of a post-mortem and pathology tests. A recent inquest concluded that she died due to a “misadventure”.

Hendrik said the coroner’s verdict was upsetting as she had also admitted that Ivana was dead before being found in the nude on the sixth-floor balcony.

He said the authorities’ “inefficiency” in managing the crime scene, highlighted by the coroner, also confirmed his suspicions that the police were not competent in their job.

“We want the courts to give us justice for our granddaughter, not to rule a misadventure when it is as clear as day, upon the coroner’s decision, that Ivana died before she fell,” he said.

He also claimed that the police had asked them to sign a document declaring that Ivana committed suicide.

“They said if we did not sign, it would take six months to release the body.

“We said no way, and thankfully, after the Dutch embassy intervened, we managed to expedite the body being shipped to the Netherlands.”

He also recalled how officers from Kuala Lumpur had come to their home in Penang to interview them about his family’s history.

“Why bother with my family history when my granddaughter is dead?”

Lawyer SN Nair, who held a watching brief for Ivana’s family during the inquest into her death, said he was glad the coroner had agreed with his submissions.

However, he reiterated his surprise at the verdict of misadventure.

“Somebody threw her body down. So how can it be a misadventure?”

He said an application for a revision of the coroner’s finding would be made at the High Court in Kuala Lumpur today.

In her ruling last Friday, coroner Mahyon Talib said Ivana’s injuries were consistent with a fall from a height, but agreed with Dutch pathologist Dr Frank van de Goot that Ivana had died before landing on the balcony of the sixth-floor unit.

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