By Justice Nwafor
Once again – and for the umpteenth time – a precious life has been lost in an avoidable accident around Irete Market axis of the busy Owerri-Onitsha federal highway. This time, it’s neither an old man nor an aged woman, but a teenage girl suspected to be about sixteen years of age.
The girl, whose identity remained in the dark as at the time of turning in this report, was crushed and she died on the spot. It would take her parents or guardian some time to recognize her face because the head was badly crushed – beyond recognition.
Her lifeless body, Trumpeta learnt, laid on the road for about thirty minutes before she was taken away to an unidentified morgue.
A witness, who craved anonymity, told Trumpeta that the girl was crossing the road when a Toyota Sienna vehicle hit her and she fell onto an oncoming sand tipper truck which then crushed her, leaving her instantly dead.
He said: “It was on Monday morning around 10am, the small girl wanted to cross the road when one Sienna coming from Owerri hit her and she fell. Then a tipper plying one-way hit her. The girl died there immediately.”
He attributed the girl’s death to the insistence of drivers on plying one lane of the road in order to avoid getting trapped in the bad spot at the other lane, averring that the girl would not have died if not for the sand tipper truck plying ‘one-way’ which smashed her.
Another witness, Mr Chukwuemeka Njoku, decried the incessant accident around the same spot, describing it as disheartening and worrisome.
He queried why people had to die almost at the same spot, disclosing that more than five people have lost their lives in avoidable accidents there in less than three months.
Mr. Njoku attributed the increasing rate of accident to the bad spot at the other lane of the road around Irete first Bus-stop which he described as “deplorable”.
He also went down memory lane and revealed that due to the bad spot about ten lives were lost in series of accidents last year which had similitude of the one that took the life of the sixteen year old teenage girl on Monday.
He therefore called on “whoever it’s their responsibility to fix the bad spot on the road” to wake up to their responsibility and “fix the road so as to avoid more lives from being lost, avoidably”.
Mr. Njoku went ahead to plead: “please, if they want to repair it, let it not be the kind that was done last year which left the road worse less than six months after”.
Trumpeta learnt the sand tipper truck was set ablaze by infuriated Irete youths as they were moved to tears on seeing the lifeless body of the girl.
