SAN PEDRO CITY, Philippines- Two people, including the conductor of a passenger bus, died while 47 others were injured in a road accident along Southern Tagalog Arterial Road (Star Tollway) in Batangas.
Police believe the bus owned by Dimple Bus Liner (plate number TYS 454) bound for Mindoro province was carrying vacationers for the All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days when it collided with a ten-wheeler truck along KM 76+937 in Barangay (village) Maraouy in Lipa City 11 p.m. on Thursday.
Police Officer 2 Christian Saludo of the Lipa City police said both the vehicles were on the southbound lane of the road when the bus suddenly hit the rear of the truck.
“The bus’s windshield was smashed due to the impact,” Saludo said.
The bus conductor identified as Arniel Diaz and another bus passenger, Jade Anthony Malibot, died around dawn at a hospital in Lipa City.
Forty-seven bus passengers, among them the bus driver Lorenzo Karingal, 44 , were brought to the Mary Mediatrix hospital in Lipa City.
No one on the truck was wounded.
Both vehicles had been towed off the road.
“According to the passengers, the bus was swerving as if the driver was sleepy even before they reached Turbina (in Calamba City, Laguna),” Saludo said.
“The (truck) driver said (the accident) was a blessing in disguise, if we could call it that, because the bus would have swerved to the other lane and we don’t know what could have happened,” he added.
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