Truck Crush Parents With Their Two Kids To Death In Gruesome Accident

A family of four members – a father, mother and their two kids, have been crushed to death by a truck laden with bags of rice. The accident reportedly happened along the Iwo-Ibadan Road in Osun State. A passenger in a commercial bus, who witnessed the accident, told Punch on Sunday that Mr. & Mrs. Olumide Bankole; their children, Sharon and Shama, were crushed to death by the truck which lost control in an attempt to avoid running into a queue of vehicles on the road due to a police checkpoint.

The eyewitness, who identified himself as Leke Okunola, said rescuers at the scene learnt that the family was travelling from Ogbomoso in Oyo State to Ibadan when the accident occurred around Odo Oba River on Christmas Eve.

“The car in which the victims were travelling was coming from the opposite direction and after the police had checked him, he moved, but a trailer which was loaded with bags of rice lost control and fell on the car.
“The truck was on top speed. The driver saw a long queue of vehicles caused by the police checkpoint. The driver did not want to ram into the vehicles on the queue and veered off the lane. That was when the car was cleared to go.
“The driver of the car saw the truck and drove into the bush. The truck driver, however, lost control and fell on the car. The driver of the car, his wife and two children, including a baby, were all dead by the time they were rescued from under the truck.”

He added that the victims were trapped under the truck for close to five hours before their mangled bodies were removed by rescuers. A lady, who was said to have been given a free ride by the family, was said to have survived, but her hand was reportedly chopped while being pulled out from the wreckage.

The Police Public Relations Officer in Osun State, Mrs. Folasade Odoro, said investigation into the matter was ongoing. While the Sector Commander of the Federal Road Safety Corps in Osun State, Mr. Mohammed Hussein, said the accident did not happen within his area of jurisdiction, that it fell under the jurisdiction of the Mokola Unit in Oyo State.