Twelve students from Limuru Girls High School were Saturday injured, one of them critically after the school van was involved in a multiple crash involving 2 school vehicles and a canter pick carrying beans at Toll Weighbridge near Juja area along the Thika Super Highway.
The injured 12 students were rushed to Thika Level 5 Hospital by good Samaritans who also struggled to rescue others trapped inside the wreckage of their school bus.
Also critically injured is a Check Unit police officer who had stopped the two school buses from Limuru Girls and Dagorreti Boys secondary schools respectively for routine inspection when the accident occurred.
However the police officer later succumbed to his injuries at the Thika Level 5 hospital.
The Limuru Girl’s school driver and a teacher were also injured and rescued from the wreckage of the vehicles and rushed to Thika level 5 hospital in the early morning accident.
Thika Sub-County Director Ronald Mbogo revealed that one of the students who was critically injured has been rushed to Agha Khan Hospital for further treatment.
He said that his officers are at Thika Level 5 Hospital monitoring the condition and the safety of the girls while the Principal of Limuru Girls was frantically working on modalities of reaching parents of the affected students.
The students from Limuru Girls and Dagoretti Boys were headed to the MPESA Academy Thika for a debating contest.
According to eye witnesses, a lorry ferrying beans brakes’ failed and rammed into the school pick up van belonging to Limuru Girls High School, while another lorry carrying sand rammed into a school bus belonging to Dagorreti Boys Secondary School which had stopped to avoid crashing into the other accident vehicles.
Witnesses who gave various accounts of what happened said that the check unit police officers had stopped the two school vehicles for routine work ticket inspection, when the canter carrying beans lost control and rammed into the Limuru Girls pick-up van forcing it to crash the police officer.
They further revealed that the driver of the Dagoretti boys’ secondary school bus on noticing the wreckage tried to avoid crashing into it but the lorry carrying sand crashed into it causing a major snarl-up on the busy highway.
A man of Asian origin who was reported to have been in the canter that was ferrying beans was also seriously injured and was also rushed to Thika level 5 Hospital.
Students from Dagorreti Boys’ High school whose bus was hit from behind remained stranded at the accident scene.
The accident caused a traffic snarl- up along the busy high way as police and KeNHA officials tried to clear the road to resume normal traffic flow.
By Lucy Wangai
