Pretoria - The Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (Prasa) will have to pay up for the injuries suffered by a teenager who was pushed out of a crowded moving train and severely injured her ankle.
The father of the 15-year-old, who is not identified as she is under aged, is claiming hundreds of thousands of rand on behalf of his daughter.
Prasa claim the teenager was hit by the train because she illegally crossed the train tracks. But Judge Zeenat Carelse of the South Gauteng High Court found that if this were the case, the teenager would not have been alive today to tell her tale.
The teenager was injured at the Mayfair Station in Joburg on October20, 2017. She claimed that the Prasa officials were negligent as they did not ensure that the train’s doors were closed before the overcrowded train took off from the platform.
She said her father placed her on the train at Park Station, before he headed back to Zimbabwe. She was on her way to Randfontein. The train stopped briefly at Mayfair, where some commuters got out and others boarded.
While they were getting on and off, the train took off with its doors still open. The teenager said she was pushed out of the moving train by the scrambling masses. The train, according to her, continued moving along.
A female security officer found her lying between the two platforms where she had landed.
The train driver told a completely different story and the judge remarked that it was as if she and the teenager were describing two completely different incidents.
According to the driver, she saw several people trying to cross the train tracks even before they reached Mayfair. She said she hooted and reduced speed. Some of the people turned back, while others managed to cross the lines.
The driver said the teenager was too slow and did not manage to climb back on to the platform.
Judge Carelse said there were “glaring” improbabilities in the version of Prasa. One of these included that the teenager was in the path of the moving train while trying to cross the railway lines.
The judge rejected Prasa’s version and said the teenager’s version was more probable.
She ordered that “Prasa was 100% liable” for the teenager’s injuries.