11 passengers killed in Easter eve crash

Eleven people were killed on the spot on Thursday when their Nairobi-bound matatu collided with a trailer at Quarry on the Nakuru-Eldoret highway.

The 11 — including the matatu driver — suffered a painful death as the 12-seater vehicle was dragged for about 40 metres and then squeezed onto a roadside embankment.

Only one of the matatu passengers, Mr Joseph Otieno, survived and was on Thursday admitted to Rift Valley Provincial General Hospital in Nakuru. Police are looking for the lorry driver and loader who fled the accident scene.

The North Rift Shuttle matatu was reduced to a shell while the truck driver’s cabin was flung some 40 metres away.

Koibatek sub-county commissioner Samson Irungu said the matatu occupants were trapped in the vehicle.

Mr Otieno was pulled out and a motorist took him to hospital, 80 kilometres away.

“The lorry was carrying iron bars and when it swerved to the right, it hit the matatu and pushed it 40 metres off the road coming to a halt when the two vehicles hit a side embankment,” Mr Irungu said.

SECOND-HAND CLOTHES

A lorry passenger, identified as Geoffrey Moses Okube, said he was awoken by a bang after the cabin was torn off the truck’s body and came to a halt.

“I was asleep but woke when the driver yelled ‘Mungu wangu’ (My Lord) followed by a loud bang. When I woke up, blood was oozing from my forehead and before me was the mangled wreck of matatu with all its occupants dead,” Mr Okube, a second-hand clothes dealer from Malaba, said.

The driver and the loader vanished, leaving him behind.

Mr Okube said he had boarded the truck at 9pm at Kangemi near Nairobi and had paid Sh1,000 as fare to Malaba where he was going to sell jackets he had bought in Nairobi.

After exchanging niceties with the truck’s crew, he climbed onto the cabin’s bed behind the driver’s seat and fell asleep.

“I have always used trailers to travel to Nairobi’s Gikomba open air market to buy clothes for sale in Malaba where I live with my two children.

“I mourn the dead and I thank God for saving me but it is painful,” the clothes vendor said.

The bodies were taken to various mortuaries in Eldoret.

Rift Valley regional police commander Mary Omari warned North Rift Shuttle against releasing the names of the accident victims to journalists until the next of kin were notified.

Residents called for the expansion of the road, saying, numerous accidents had been witnessed as lorries negotiated a sharp bend after descending the Mau Summit-Total-Kamara stretch.