Lafarge truck kills policeman, injures five others in Imo

A policeman was on Thursday crushed to death, while five others were injured in a road accident involving a trailer and a police patrol Hilux truck at Naze along Owerri/Aba Road in Imo State.
The policeman was attached to the Safe Highways Patrol team of the Imo State Police Command Headquarters, Owerri.
The accident, which occurred in the morning, also left three other policemen in the patrol van, the trailer driver and his conductor seriously injured.
According to an eyewitness, the incident occurred when the trailer, heading toward Aba in Abia State, ran into another stationary heavy-duty truck loaded with assorted drinks.
The witness added that while trying to avoid hitting the truck headlong, it rammed into the ill-fated police van.
The trailer, marked: “Lafarge G328,” and loaded with floor tiles, after a head-on collision with the police van, rammed into the premises of The Eternal Sacred Order of Cherubim and Seraphim, Mount of Mercy, Naze Branch and smashed the fence.
The officers involved in the accident, it was learnt, were returning from night patrol on the Owerri/Aba Highway when the trailer ran into their van.
Another eyewitness told newsmen that he was woken up by the sound of the crash alongside other neighbours who rushed to the scene to save the driver of the police vehicle who was trapped in the van.
The source said the police officer, believed to be a sergeant, who was bleeding profusely from all parts of his body, died while efforts were on to rescue him from the mangled van.
He said the driver of the trailer also sustained injuries, adding that the police immediately came to the scene and evacuated their colleagues and the vehicle.
When contacted, the Police Public Relations Officer of the Imo State Command, DSP Andrew Enwerem, confirmed the accident but could not disclose the identity and rank of the police officer that died on the spot.
Enwerem, however, said the casualty was the driver of the police van, while three others sustained several degrees of injury.
He also said the injured had been taken to the hospital for treatment, while the deceased’s body had been deposited at the mortuary.
Enwerem, who described the auto crash as very unfortunate, said investigations had commenced to unravel the actual cause of the fatal accident.
He said the command’s van involved in the crash had been retrieved from the scene and returned to base.
The PPRO said the trailer driver, who, according to him, sustained no bodily injury, is now in police custody as investigation was ongoing.
However, the accident caused heavy gridlock along the ever-busy Aba-Owerri Road in the morning as the debris of the truck and the van as well as cartons and pieces of broken tiles littered the highway.
NAN.