VISAKHAPATNAM: In a tragedy, an elderly man died and four people including an additional superintendent of police and three children received grievous injuries after a private school bus ploughed into a group of people who were relaxing on a beach in Visakhapatnam on Sunday evening.
A preliminary investigation suggested that the driver lost control after a brake failure while the minibus was running on a steep gradient near the Hotel Novotel on the Beach Road. The vehicle swerved off the road, rammed into the parapet wall before mowing down people and parked bikes at around 8 pm.
Eyewitnesses said there was a big thud as vehicles hit the parapet wall, breaking it into pieces. The vehicle then hit two people who flew into the air before crashing down on the ground. Among the five victims, one person died on the spot, while another person’s legs were severed from the body. A number of motorbikes parked in the parking lot flew into the air.
The deceased has been identified as D Dharma Rao, father of additional superintendent of police DN Kishore, while the injured are Kishore himself, his son and daughter, and another 10-year-old boy. DN Kishore, along with his family, went to the beach to spend his Sunday. Many visitors had a lucky escape after they jumped to another side of the wall.
Being Sunday, the Beach Road had a huge rush, with many people sitting on the parapet wall. The bus fell from around five feet height and stopped before the Children’s Park wall.
Police rushed to the spot along with medical service teams and shifted the injured to King George Hospital.
It is not the first time, the steep gradient on the Beach Road caused such severe accident. On June 3, 2014, nine people were injured when an auto-rickshaw lost control and crashed into the parapet wall near the Novotel Hotel. Police said it is the third such accident on the stretch.