Drunken driver crashes bus in Cebu; wife and daughter killed

[wpgmappity id=”1367″]

CEBU CITY—A drunken bus driver crashed his vehicle in the southern Cebu town of Badian Monday, killing his wife and 5-year-old daughter and injuring at least 19 other passengers, police said.

Investigators said bus driver Erwin Gerson, 42, escaped unhurt but was so drunk he did not even realize that his wife Marlyn, 41, and their daughter, Geralyn, who were seated on the front seat beside him, had been killed in the 7:18 a.m. crash.

Investigator PO2 Bismark Babiera of the Badian police said Gerson admitted he had been drinking the night before and tested positive for alcohol at the Badian district hospital where he and some of the injured passengers were taken following the accident, which occurred on a blind, downhill curve in Sitio Bangko-bangko in Badian, 97 km southwest of Cebu City.

The Ceres bus was traveling from the town of Santander on the southernmost tip of the island of Cebu en route to Cebu City when it hit a steel post and fell on its right side while coming down a curve on the national highway, Babiera said.

He said Gerson admitted he had been drinking the night before at the Ceres bus terminal in Santander.

Babiera said Marlyn and Geralyn Gerson suffered severe injuries. The woman broke her head and one of her hands was severed; her daughter’s head was severed.

The injured passengers were taken to different hospitals in Badian, the town of Alegria as well as Cebu City.

Nineteen passengers, most of them students of the Cebu Technological University in Moalboal, were treated in Alegria and Badian hospitals, Babiera said, adding that the number of injured could be higher as others may have been taken to other hospitals.

Babiera said Gerson, the driver, was apparently unhurt but still drunk when found sitting on the roadside near the site of the accident.

“He did not even know that his wife and daughter were killed,” Babiera said.

The driver cried when police informed him at the police station that his wife and daughter were dead.

He is now under detention at the Badian police station and will be facing criminal charges, Babiera said.