By Garmah Never Lomo, garmahlomo@gmail.com
On Saturday about 3pm Tower Hill was a scene of sorrow, when a 27-year- old woman along with her sons, one eight and the other two years, were killed in a tragic motor accident on the Monrovia-Robertsfield highway.
The vehicle they were traveling in was heading toward the Liberia’s only international airport, RIA on Saturday, May 25, 2019.
The woman was said to have been carrying her sister’s luggage and travel documents to her at the RIA airport, when a fourteen-tyre trailer truck packed with cement failed on the hill and the driver lost control of the huge vehicle.
After the truck failed on the hill and the driver lost control, the truck which was to Firestone then reversed with force and rested on a Toyota Corolla taxi that the woman and her two children were riding.
According to eyewitness, Adolphous Gbar on the scene said when the failed truck was climbing the hill, two commercial taxis were between the it and the Toyota corolla car but the two commercial taxi made their way through by passing to a gas station on the right before climbing the hill.
He said they told the driver of the corolla driver to follow them but he was afraid and did not follow, but rather took advice from other drivers that were behind him to revers at which time the traffic was static.
Eyewitness Gbar also said before the accident occurred, there were no cars coming from the opposite lane but the driver of the vehicle was in a state of confusion. It caused the Toyota Corolla vehicle summersault smashing it. Rescuers, who rushed on the scene, had to use cutlasses, axes and other materials to take the dead and those who survived out of the taxi.
The eyewitness further narrated that there were seven passengers on board the Toyota corolla vehicle with one of the deceased sons sitting on one of the passenger’s lap in the front seat. And the other child was sitting on her lap at the back adding that when the failed trailer’s cement was coming with force, the passenger at the front with the deceased son fled for his life from the taxi and left the child there when the cement truck came and instantly killed the two and eight years sons with their mother half way dead lying down near the taxi.
Eyewitness account said the driver of the truck, whose name is not known, was forcibly removed from the car with his left hand broken and the rest of the passengers are in critical condition at the ELWA hospital in Paynesville, outside Monrovia.
The driver of truck later escaped the scene but a conductor who was on the truck was taken to the police station in Shefflin town for investigation.
Meanwhile, residents of Tower Hill on the RIA highway have blamed the government and its relevant authorities for not taking measures by stopping heavy duty truck, containers and trailers from plying that route.
The resident said the government is responsible for the constant loss of lives at that community.