‘Wasn’t just me,’ says bus driver in fatal crash

DAVAO CITY—“It was not just me.”

With those words, bus driver Daniel Espinosa emerged from six days in hiding and surrendered to Davao City Vice Mayor Rodrigo Duterte before midnight on Thursday, insisting he was not the only one involved in the road collision that led to the death of journalist Lourdes “Chit” Estella-Simbulan in Quezon City.

“I was scared. I had to run because I was afraid I might get killed if I stayed there,” Espinosa also told Duterte during their meeting at Duterte’s office, which journalists witnessed.

Espinosa, a 50-year-old father of four, had been hiding in the house of a sister in Toril district here since Tuesday.

He was to be flown to Manila late last night to face charges of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide and damage to property, as well as abandonment of his victim.

Simbulan, also a professor at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City, was killed when the taxi she was in was rammed by the passenger bus driven by Espinosa. Before that, according to police, the cab was sideswiped by another bus.

Repentant driver

“It was an accident,” the distraught Espinosa told Duterte in Filipino. “That’s why I surrendered, sir, so that my record would be cleared.”

Sounding repentant, Espinosa repeatedly swore he did not intentionally ram into Simbulan’s cab.

Espinosa claimed that before his bus and Simbulan’s taxi collided, another vehicle had hit the cab.

“The truth is I was not the one her vehicle was racing against,” he said.

“There was another bus that hit it before we crashed into each other,” Espinosa also said.

He claimed what happened was not his fault.

Why flee?

Duterte said what he did not understand was why Espinosa fled the scene.

“Why did you have to leave and hide? Why did you not go to the police and have yourself investigated?” Duterte asked.

Duterte told Espinosa his problem would not have worsened had he immediately surrendered.

“Your problem now is that the incident, your case, has angered the President… the problem, really, is that there was a crime but it was a crime minus the malice,” Duterte said.

Espinosa said he went into hiding because he feared for his life.

‘I panicked’

Talking with reporters later, Espinosa said he did not know anyone at the place where the collision occurred, which was why he fled.

“I panicked. I had nobody to ask help from because I don’t have relatives there. I did not have anybody to run to except my wife. I was really scared,” he said.

Espinosa said that before leaving for Davao on a bus, he and his wife had a brief talk but he did not tell her where he was going.

Nenita Haom, Espinosa’s older sister, said her brother arrived in their home in Toril on Tuesday and appeared to be disoriented.

“He could barely talk. He seemed to have lost his voice. In a barely audible tone, he told me he was involved in a crash,” she said in the vernacular.

They then decided to seek Duterte’s help after learning that Espinosa was being hunted by the authorities.

Engine problem

Before turning him over to the police here, Duterte advised Espinosa that he did not have to talk publicly about what happened if he did not want to.

He also asked lawyer Salvador Panelo to help the embattled driver.

Senior Superintendent Rainer Idio, operations chief of the Quezon City Police District, said engine problem had delayed the Philippine Airlines flight that would bring Espinosa from Davao to Manila.

Espinosa was originally expected to arrive in Manila last night but authorities later said he might not arrive until around midnight.

He will be escorted by Superintendent Arnold Santiago of the Quezon City Traffic Enforcement Unit and by Chief Inspector Jay Borromeo of the QC police legal division.

P300,000 bounty

Chief Superintendent George Regis, district director, said the police would present Espinosa to the Quezon City Prosecutor’s Office so he could get a copy of the complaint against him.

Police have identified Espinosa as the driver of the Universal Guiding Star bus which crashed into Estella’s taxi on Commonwealth Avenue, dubbed as the country’s “killer highway.”

“It will be up to the court to determine if he will be released on bail. Otherwise, he will remain under police custody,” Regis said.

A P300,000 reward had been announced for his arrest. With reports from Julie M. Aurelio and Nancy C. Carvajal in Manila