The final hours

TOP TO BOTTOM: Sima Long with the necklace she says Jiri Zivny gave her in Cambodia; the Blue Storm nightclub in Sihanoukville, where Long says she and Zivny partied on the night he crashed his motorcycle; the ATM machine from where Zivny withdrew cash just before the accident.
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By Dale Bass - Kamloops This Week
Published: February 14, 2009

Jiri Zivny left Sima Long a gift on the night he died in Cambodia

Sima Long wears a silver necklace with Christ on the cross around her neck.

She hasn’t taken it off since Jiri Zivny gave it to her — on the last night of his life.

The 17-year-old partied with the Kamloops man that night — Jan. 9 — in a couple of Sihanoukville, Cambodian nightclubs and is now left mourning his death, she told KTW.

Zivny, 43, went to Cambodia for a vacation after touring orphanages in Southeast Asia, a trip organized by the Kamloops-based International Humanitarian Hope Society.

KTW has uncovered the last 48 hours of Zivny’s life, revealing a man who was doing what most anyone would do while on vacation — relaxing, having some fun and making new friends.

On Jan. 8 — the day before Zivny was injured in what was originally reported as an assault and robbery, but was actually a motorcycle crash — he spent some time at the Freedom Hotel and Dance Club, located on Sophicalmongkol Street, about a block from the main downtown route, Ekareach Street, and across the road from the town’s bus station.

Witnesses there saw him playing pool with local women.

The Freedom Hotel features a bar that is open round the clock, a $3 US buffet and, if you book a room, a free mug of Angkor or Anchor beer delivered to your $5-a-night room — with refills just 50 cents in the bar.

The following day, Zivny made his way to the Savery Guesthouse, Beergarden and Restaurant, about five blocks from Freedom House, near the Sihanoukville taxi stand.

Beer there is also 50 cents.

There, he met Long, a Vietnamese girl who had arrived at the Savery three days before, looking for work.

Long told KTW she was hoping to find work there, as had another girl from her village, explaining she could not afford to go to school and, because her family is poor, she needed a job.

Long said she met Zivny at the bar, where they “had a lot of fun together with other girls from my village.” She said Zivny drank “19 glasses of Angkor draft beer,” while she drank 17 glasses of a coconut rum and Coke mixture.

By the time the pair decided after midnight to head to the Blue Storm disco, Long said Zivny’s bar bill was $100.

Long said she and Zivny continued drinking and partying at the Blue Storm, a disco on Ekareach Street just a few blocks from the Savery.

Zivny decided to go to an ATM machine at the Canadia Bank on Ekareach Street, about a block away.

The pair was returning to the Blue Storm on a motorcyle Zivny was using when they swerved to miss a car and crashed head-on into another motorcyle with two riders.

Long said the impact left all four on the road. She was wearing a helmet (which became the law in Cambodia on Jan. 1 this year), but Zivny wasn’t.

Two cab drivers saw the accident and one took the unconsious Long in a tuk tuk — a vehicle similar to a motorcyle with an area at the back for carrying passengers — to a private clinic near the Freedom House and bus station.

Staff there sent her to the Sihanoukville Referral Hospital.

At least one of the two on the other motorcyle was also taken to hospital.

Somaly Soun, another cab driver who saw the accident, said when he reached Zivny, the man was bleeding from his ears and his face was covered with blood.

Soun said he originally thought the injured man was his friend, Tony Jones.

Jones, a Cambodian-based online journalist (sihanoukville.com), said he and Zivny bear some similarity.

Soun said he called for another tuk tuk to take Zivny to the Sihanoukville Referral Hospital.

Long told KTW she saw Zivny there on a stretcher, trembling. Someone removed his bloodstained clothes and put them under the stretcher.

“Which is what they do with everyone here because there are no lockers in Cambodia hospitals,” she said. “Usually, your family takes care of you and stays with you all the time and brings food to you because the hospital has no restaurant or even staff to take care of you.”

Jones told KTW the hospital is “drastically ill-equipped to deal with anything above cuts and straightforward pregnancy,” so a call was made to the Calmette Hospital in Phnom Penh, which sent an ambulance to make the four-hour trip to Sihanoukville and then back again with Zivny.

Zivny was sent to the intensive-care unit but, within less than an hour, was transferred to the neurological department, where he remained in a coma before dying six days later.

Long said she continues to suffer from trauma to her head, her mouth is swollen and her untreated jaw hurts as if it is broken. She said she has no money to go to a doctor.

At some point after the accident, Evelyn Picklyk, head of the Kamloops charity, received a call from someone she called Zivny’s travelling companion, advising her Zivny had been assaulted and robbed at an ATM machine.

This person’s full name or whereabouts has never been disclosed to the media by Picklyk.

Doctors who treated Zivny at Calmette Hospital, however, said his injuries were consistent with a traffic accident, as was noted in the report by the ambulance driver.

Picklyk made a public appeal for $100,000 to bring Zivny home, continuing to say he had been beaten and robbed, for which she claimed she had photographic proof.

She also referred to reports she was receiving from a plastic surgeon who was not treating Zivny, but who had looked in on him at Calmette.

Later, when asked about the conflicting reports, Picklyk said she was not focusing on the cause, but rather dealing with the death of a cherished friend.

Long, however, said she is also dealing with the death of a friend — but she has one tangible reminder of Zivny — a necklace with Jesus Christ on a cross he gave her.

“I wear [it] ever since I met him.”