3 DEAD AS SPEEDING COROLLA HITS TRUCK

HHELEHHELE – Police officers retrieve bodies from a Toyota Corolla after it collided with a truck.

MANZINI – Three people died when a Toyota Corolla sedan they were travelling in crashed into a truck along the Manzini/Mafutseni road near Hhelehhele yesterday.
The three occupants of the South African-registered sedan were believed to be nationals of the neighbouring republic.

The male driver and a female passenger who was seated in the front died on impact. The third passenger, also a female, succumbed to death while admitted to the Raleigh Fitkin Memorial Hospital.
Mentiwa Dlamini, the driver of the truck, said the sedan which was travelling towards Mafutseni, deviated from its lane and came towards his direction as he was driving towards the Manzini direction.
“I saw the Toyota Corolla driving towards me at high speed and tried to draw his attention by flicking my lights to alert him that he was driving on my lane.

“He did not show any sign of slowing down. I had no choice so I swerved onto his lane to try and avoid him but unfortunately I wasn’t fast enough, thus he rammed into my truck,” he explained in a low voice.
Dlamini, whose head was draped in a bandage, said he was travelling from the Mafutseni direction towards Manzini. He was driving a Nissan UD 08 truck branded with a Farm Chemicals logo.
He said when the sedan collided with the truck, his head hit the roof, hence he was injured.  He further said he felt well save for the head injury that he sustained on impact.

“I’ve been driving for 14 years and never have I seen what unfolded before me. I tried my best to avoid a head-on collision as the man driving the sedan seemed oblivious of the fact that I was coming straight at him too,” Dlamini said.
He further opined that he was extremely traumatised by what unfolded before him to the extent that he failed to go near the sedan after the accident. “I was too traumatised and did not look inside the Corolla closely. I noted that there were limbs and brain matter scattered on the tarmac,” Dlamini said.

The accident which happened at about 10am, caused an hour-long traffic jam as officers from the Fire and Emergency Services struggled to retrieve the trapped body of the female who was seated behind the driver.
At the scene of the accident, groceries were strewn all over the road while the side of the car was completely wrecked on impact.

Paramedics found at the scene revealed that the female passenger had to be removed using the ‘jaws of life’ from the wreckage.
“We struggled for over an hour to remove her unconscious body from the wreck. We had to administer her drip and other medication while in the vehicle as the fire department struggled to cut it open and release her trapped body,” a paramedic explained.

It was revealed that the female occupant broke both her hands and legs due to the impact of the collision as well as sustained deep cuts on her feet.
Members of the public found watching the Fire Department cleaning the road and covering the body matter scattered over the tarmac noted that the driver of the truck might have also died had he not swerved out of the way to evade the sedan.

Mzwandile Simelane, one of the witnesses, said he was at the nearby butchery when he saw the sedan driving at high speed on the wrong side of the road towards Mafutseni.
“My friends and I all stood and watched the car that didn’t even stop at the intersection and was moving very fast,” Simelane said.
When they heard the loud crash after a few minutes they suspected that it was the sedan and they rushed to the scene.

He revealed that they saw legs protruding from the sedan belonging to the occupant of the passenger seat. He said they saw the beheaded body of the female passenger whose head reportedly exploded in the collision.
People interviewed on the scene of the accident also opined that the occupants of the sedan could have been visiting their extended family in the country as the vehicle was loaded with vegetables and a new stove which was also destroyed during the accident.
Carrots, green peppers and tomatoes were found within the confines of the wrecked sedan and a plastic filled with groceries was found lying under the truck that they had collided into.

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