Man crushed to death on walkway, another loses leg as car rams into shops in Lagos

Three suspected drunken young men, who were still reveling in the nice time they had at a club around the NNPC depot in Ejigbo, Lagos State on Sunday night rammed their car, a white Toyota Camry, into some pedestrians and crushed a jobseeker to death on Kudirat Adenekan Street, Oke-Afa at about 11:00p.m.

They were speeding towards the Canoe bridge when the accident occurred. A bystander also got one of his legs broken.

The two unidentified victims, according to eyewitnesses, were walking on the pedestrian walkway when the car lost control, rammed into shops and hit the victims, before eventually summersaulting thrice and landing in the middle of the road.

While some eyewitnesses attributed the accident and the reckless driving to the drunken state of the driver, others said the car brake failed though it was going on top speed.

Unfortunately, the man who was crushed had seen the car tumbling towards him and had hurriedly left the walkway to stay by one of the shops when the car swerved and made for the row of shops exactly when he ran to for safety.

In the twinkling of an eye, he was pinned to the wall of the shops. The man caught a pitiable sight as he breathed his last with his eyes wide open in anguish.

It was when onlookers rushed to extricate him from the debris already stone dead that they discovered his neatly folded Curriculum Vitae (CV) in his pockets. He was said to have only three days before arrived the area from Anambra State in search of employment.

According to an eyewitness, who preffered anonymity, “there were three men in the car, suspected to be Yahoo Boys, but the amazing thing is that none of them had as little as a scratch and before people could shake off the shock of what happened, they had fled the scene. The young man whose leg was amputated by the car was immediately rushed to a nearby hospital for treatment.

“It was terrible, and it could have been worse if it had happened on a weekday or some hours earlier, when a lot of people walk on that footpath with many shop-owners closing late. In fact, the drinking bar close to the scene had just locked up. Same for a woman’s saloon beside it. The hairdresser too just closed for the day 20 minutes before the incident and I gathered there were up to 10 persons in the shop,” he said.

Residents of the area invited the emergency response teams who took away the body to Isolo General Hospital mortuary and tolled the car away.

The Guardian gathered that the three occupants of the car yesterday reported themselves to the police at the Ejigbo police station, where they have been detained pending outcome of police investigations.