Trailer crushes 8 to death including students in Abuja

No fewer than eight people including students have been crushed to death when a trailer conveying sharp sand lost control in Abuja.

The incident occurred on Thursday around 4 p.m. before the Keke NAPEP Park along the road that leads to Mpape junction.

According to a witness, Mustapha Aminu, the truck rammed into some tricycles popularly called Keke and vehicles, killing at least 8 people, including students.

Aminu said the driver, having seen the havoc he had caused, abandoned the truck and ran away with the help of a motorcycle.

“When the incident happened, I was close to the road. It was very damaging. It killed about eight people as I counted. People were saying the trailer brake failed. To me, what caused the incident at first was that one of the truck’s tires burst, which made it lose control.

“Nobody heard the horn from the truck, because sometimes when incidents like this happen, one would hear the horn from afar, then people would stay clear from the road. If the driver had done this, a lot of lives would have been saved.

“More than seven Keke and several cars were affected. About two students in one of the tricycles died instantly,” he said.

Confirming the incident, the Sector Commander of the FCT, Chorrie Mutaa said their rescue team recovered five dead bodies and 10 injured persons. He added that 13 vehicles, including the truck that caused the accident and a motorcycle, were involved in the accident.

In a related development, a 34-year-old man has died after drowning in the Elegushi Beach, in Lagos State, during a church hangout event.

The victim, identified as John, was a member of an unnamed Ikorodu-based church which had organised a picnic for its youths on Saturday.

Trouble, however, started when the members were about to leave the beach that Saturday afternoon but couldn’t locate him anywhere.

It was learned that as the church members began searching for him, someone informed them that they had seen him go into the water. Lifeguards and divers were alerted but efforts to locate him in the water that Saturday proved abortive.

It was gathered that his body was only recovered by lifeguards on Tuesday afternoon at the beach.

A source who witnessed the event but doesn’t want to be named said,

“A church from Ikorodu had come to Elegushi beach for a hangout on Saturday. They were just young people who came around to have fun; about 35 of them came that Saturday.

“It happened that late in the afternoon when they were packing up to leave, they called everyone to make sure that they were all accounted for, 35 of them, before they left. That was how they realised that one of them, John, was missing.

“Then they started searching for him that evening. Then, someone told one of them that he had seen the guy walk towards the water thinking he knew how to swim.

“The group then called lifeguards and divers to help search for him that Saturday, but they didn’t find him until yesterday, Tuesday, at about 1 p.m., when they recovered his body at the beach.”

The Lagos State Police Public Relations Officer, Benjamin Hundeyin, confirmed the incident adding: “The family of the victim has been contacted and the body of the victim has also been deposited at the Yaba General Hospital for an autopsy.”

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