Durban - A group of traumatised Lesotho school pupils left for home on Thursday night after one of their classmates was killed in a freak accident in the Durban CBD.
The 16-year-old boy put his head out of a bus window on a narrow street after the vehicle hit a road sign and was hit by a second sign.
The steel parking meter road sign sliced his head, killing him instantly, according to a witness.
The tour bus had been avoiding parked cars as the driver navigated the narrow Dick King Road - which runs between Dr Pixley KaSeme (West) and Anton Lembede (Smith) streets.
The boy, who has not been identified, had been hanging out the window with two other pupils. He was wearing a black hood.
The pupils, from Molapo High School in the district of Leribe, Lesotho, near the Free State, were in Durban for a week-long visit.
undefinedThokozani Hlengwa, a local schoolteacher who witnessed the incident, said he was shocked by what he had seen.
“As a school teacher myself, we are used to warning children not do this, but children being children, once you look away they carry on doing the wrong things,” he said.
Hlengwa said he saw the three pupils hanging out the window and said two managed to duck when they saw the meter parking signage on a light pole, but not the third. “That child died instantly,” he said.
“I feel very bad for the children, the teachers and the driver, because today was their last day in Durban and a bad thing like this happens. The driver was weeping uncontrollably and you can see that he is hurting badly by what happened here. It’s always very sad when a trip ends in tears. The boy’s poor parents will be devastated.”
The bus driver has not been arrested and was seen driving away in the bus with a few teachers.
KwaZulu-Natal’s Emergency Medical Services spokesman, Robert McKenzie, said paramedics declared the boy dead at the scene.
“KZN EMS paramedics treated another child who had been an occupant on the bus,” he said.
KZN police spokesman Major Thulani Zwane said an inquest docket had been opened.
Daily News