According to Shin Min Daily News (SMDN), Aloysius Pang's body was sent to the Auckland Airport in New Zealand at 7.30am New Zealand time, 2:30 am Singapore time on Jan.25.

Pang's body will be repatriated back to Singapore via a KC-135 aircraft from the Republic of Singapore Air Force (RSAF), as mentioned in Defence Minister Ng Eng Hen's Facebook post.

Channel NewsAsia (CNA) reported that under the family's request, no post-mortem of Pang's body had taken place at Waikato Hospital's mortuary.

The New Zealand authorities were waiting for the family's approval before carrying out the post-mortem.

Brother and manager spoke to media

Earlier on Thursday night (Jan. 24), Pang's older brother Kenny Pang and artiste manager Dasmond Koh had arrived back in Singapore and granted a 13-minute media interview.

Koh appealed for patience from the public and fans as they worked out arrangements on bringing Pang’s body back, and any plans for a public funeral and farewell ceremony.

The elder Pang also expressed his gratefulness to the Minstry of Defence (MINDEF) and Koh for their help in ensuring his family could gain access to Pang as quickly as they could.

Why it happened

Earlier on the same day, Chief of Army Major-General (MG) Goh Si Hou explained how Pang became injured in a Singapore Self-Propelled Howitzer.

According to Goh’s account, on Jan. 19, Pang was in the vehicle with two others -  another technician and a gun technician commander - to diagnose a fault in the gun.

The gun barrel was then lowered to a standby position, and Pang was “unable to get out of the way” and was crushed between the gun barrel of the howitzer and its cabin.

He passed away on Jan. 23, at 8.45pm.

The army has since called for a safety timeout, pausing high-risk activities, such as field training and live firing.

There is also a reduction of the training tempo, to review safety procedures.

Top photo adapted via Pang's Instagram and Kevin Ballard's Pinterest