8 dead 19 injured in bloody highway weekend
TWO TEENAGE students were killed and a third gravely injured when their pickup somersaulted off the highway before hitting a tree , bringing the death toll on a bloody weekend to eight. A further 19 were injured.
All three students were on the cusp of entering 12th grade in a Panama City private school.
The accident occurred at 2.20 pm on Sunday February 28 In Nata, Cocle.
A source revealed that the vehicle allegedly rolled several times and then hit a tree located on the side of the Pan American Highway. The 17-year-old driver was taken to the Rafael Estevez Hospital Aguadulce and then transferred to the capital.
Other accidents in the weekend of carnage were scattered across the country,
ALCOHOL
In Veracruz at 5:00 pm on Saturday a three vehicle pileup between a panel truck, a’pirate’ busito and a pick-up, left four dead: the drivers of the pickup and the bus, and two busito passengers, one of them an 11 month-old baby. Eleven people were injured.
El Siglo reported that the pickup driver was seen by several people drinking alcoholic beverages minutes before the accident.
The56-year-old driver of the ‘pirate’ bus was a Metro bus driver who, like many of his colleagues seen behind the wheels of taxis and busitos was moonlighting.
Another fatal accident involving alcohol took place an hour earlier Arraiján – La Chorrera highway when speeding drunk driver Veronica Chirú Inés Osorio, lost control and killed a policeman on traffic duty .
A Breathalyzer test registered 63 (above 24 is considered over the limit).
In Colon a 47-year-old man was killed while crossing three lanes of the highway. He was hit by two cars.
In Chiriqui seven people were injured, One seriously, in a collision between a transport trailer truck and a bus at 10.40 am on Sunday at Silimin. The injured were taken to Hospital San Felix.
