News

October 26, 2016

One killed as train runs into traders, vehicles in Enugu

One killed as train runs into traders, vehicles in Enugu

Passenger escape the site of a train derailment in Eseka on October 21, 2016. Fifty-three were killed and over 300 injured when a packed Cameroon passenger train derailed on October 21 while travelling between the capital Yaounde and the economic hub Douala, state broadcaster Crtv said. The train, crammed with people due to road traffic disruption between the two cities, left the tracks just before reaching the central city of Eseka, Transport minister Edgar Alain Mebe Ngo’o said earlier. / AFP PHOTO

By Dennis Agbo & Chinedu Adonu
ENUGU—TRAGEDY struck in Enugu, yesterday, when a train driver rammed into buses and traders at the popular Ogbete Main Market, Enugu, killing a middle-aged man known as Ikechukwu.

Several people were also left with various degrees of injuries as the train got to the area without the usual blaring of horns to alert other road users.

An eyewitness said the train, said to be returning from Port Harcourt, Rivers State, barely missed a tricycle rider at the Zik Avenue intersection before getting to the Ogbete Market, where it killed one.

One of the vehicle drivers, who narrowly escaped death, said: “God saved us because what the man driving the train planned was to massacre people and set the whole place on fire. If not for God, who moved the vehicles out miraculously, we all would have perished.”

Another eyewitness, a businessman at Ogbete Market, Mr. Lawrence Eze, alleged that “the train man always drives recklessly and he does not like to sound his horn, until he is close to the level crossing.”

When contacted, Enugu State Police Public Relations Officer, Ebere Amaraizu, confirmed the incident, describing it as horrible.

He wondered why the train driver should be on speed without using his horn.