Cement mixer tears tot in half in Manila road accident
MANILA, Philippines –The body of a three-year-old girl was torn in half while her grandfather was badly wounded Saturday morning when their scooter was run over by a cement mixer truck that had surged forward just as the traffic light at a busy intersection in Manila turned green.
Crisaldo Morales, 48, had just taken his granddaughter Janeryl Llanda for a ride on his scooter from his wife’s stall at the Manila City Hall to buy merchandise in Paco for his wife to sell before going to their house in the Baseco Compound in Tondo.
Morales remains confined at the Medical Center Manila after his right leg was crushed by the truck while his granddaughter was ripped in two by the wheels of the large vehicle.
“She [Janeryl] insisted she wanted to go. My husband did not want to take her with him because he had an errand to run but my granddaughter said she wanted to go with him to Baco [the girl’s pronunciation of Baseco],” Dolores, 55, a vendor at the Manila City Hall, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
She added that Janeryl was a bright child who was starting to learn to write.
“Janeryl told me she already wanted to go to school. I promised to buy her a blackboard so she could practice how to write on her own,” Dolores said.
Ledy Gonzales Cano, of Parañaque City, the driver of the cement mixer owned by Monocrete Ready Mix Corp., was taken into police custody immediately after the accident as police wanted to shield him from an angry mob.
Senior Police Officer 3 Sergio Macaraig, of the MPD Traffic Enforcement Unit, said that the accident happened at around 9 a.m at the corner of United Nations Avenue and San Marcelino Street in Ermita, right beside the MPD headquarters.
Macaraig pointed out that Morales and his granddaughter were aboard the scooter and had stopped at a red traffic light. The mixer was behind them.
Just as the light turned green, Cano stepped on the accelerator and hit the scooter on the rear, causing it to fall on it side, Macaraig said, adding that the truck then ran over Morales and Janeryl who had fallen on the pavement.
The sight of the three-year-old girl’s body, her torso beneath the truck and the lower portion on the front wheels of the mixer, angered bystanders who tried to seize Cano from his vehicle and beat him up.
Cano, who insisted he did not see the scooter in front of his truck, was rescued by responding policemen while Morales was rushed to the nearby Medical Center Manila.
Monocrete officials, Macaraig told the Inquirer, have assured the family of the victims that they would shoulder the funeral and medical expenses.
The driver of the truck remains detained pending the filing of a charge of reckless imprudence resulting in homicide, serious physical injuries and damage to property against him.
