BY PETER DURU
MAKURDI—Four persons were yesterday burnt to death following an auto crash in  Makurdi.

The J-5 bus in which the deceased were travelling collided with a trailer along the popular Bank Road and burst into a ball of flame. Vanguard gathered from an eyewitness that the occupants of the J-5 bus were believed to be traders, from Aba, AbiaState. They were reportedly heading to one of the northern states when the driver dosed off on the wheels before running into a stationary trailer.

The witness who gave his name as John Ugwu, said, “this J-5 bus overtook my car before the Makurdi mechanic village and the way the driver drove recklessly, I just had a premonition that something unfortunate could happen.

“I was driving behind him, (the J-5 driver) when I noticed that the bus was occasionally swerving off the road and this could have been as a result of sleep because it was as if they drove all night from the East.

“Unfortunately, we saw the bus ram into the parked trailer. It was just like a movie, and the bus immediately burst into flames.”

The eyewitness stressed that nobody could go near the burning bus to rescue its four occupants because of the intensity of the fire.

The police could not be reached but when Vanguard visited the scene of the incident, officials of the Federal Road Safety Commission, FRSC, were seen removing the burnt corpses from the crash site