There was commotion on Wednesday after a mini commercial bus conveying a corpse for burial was involved in an accident at Idimu in the Alimosho Local Government Area of Lagos State.
PUNCH Metro learnt that about five people sustained varying degrees of injuries in the incident, which occurred around 10 am.
These include three females and two males.
It was gathered that the mourners were transporting the corpse from Ejigbo to the Ikotun area of the community in a convoy of three minibuses and one Toyota space bus.
On getting to the Idimu bus stop area, the bus on which the corpse was, developed a faulty brake, thereby causing the driver to ram into the bus ahead of it.
An eyewitness, who identified himself simply as Foluke, said the drivers of both buses were also injured in the accident.
She said, “Some buses were picking up passengers on the layby when a minibus suddenly crashed into another one. The impact caused some of them to fall off the vehicle, and they got injured.
“At first, we thought it was an accident between two buses that had passengers inside them.
It was when we moved close that we discovered that they were heading for burial when we saw a corpse inside one of them. The occupants were also seriously injured.”
The bus driver conveying the corpse, while narrating how the accident occurred, said the vehicle had initially developed a fault midway before they later proceeded on the journey.
Reeling in pain, he said, “On our way coming from Ejigbo, the bus developed a fault midway and started moving slowly. It later started working normally again, and while we approached Idimu to connect to Ikotun, I discovered that the brake was no longer responding. That was how I lost control and crashed the bus ahead of me. I wasn’t expecting this terrible incident today.”
The scene of the incident was already crowded when our correspondent visited the spot.
Some of the injured persons were also seen sitting on the bare floor, as some residents administered first aid to them.
During a closer look, a female occupant was seen holding onto the corpse in the bus with injuries on her leg.
A food vendor close to the spot where the accident happened, but declined to mention her name, said that about three of the victims had broken legs.
“About three people had broken legs in the accident. It took the intervention of the people around who rescued them because their legs were trapped in the seat of the bus. The one who got flung out of the bus waiting to pick up a passenger was among them,” she disclosed.
It was, however, gathered that some mourners who were ahead of the bus in the convoy had driven some distances away before they realised what had happened.
One of the mourners who alighted from the vehicles ahead and rushed down to the spot where the incident occurred said, “We were ahead of them and we had almost reached the Council bus stop when we noticed that they were no longer behind us. It was when we put a call through that we realised that there was an accident.
Our correspondent observed that the injured victims were taken away from the spot and transported to a nearby hospital for medical attention, while the corpse was moved into another vehicle.
PUNCH Metro reported that no fewer than six people lost their lives, while several others sustained various degrees of injuries in a fatal accident involving an 18-seater commercial bus along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on Saturday, April 5.
The crash caused a major gridlock, leaving commuters stranded for hours as emergency responders worked to clear the wreckage and rescue victims. (Punch)
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