Maravi

Solwezi pupils riot after truck kills grade 12 girl, leaves 6 injured

Solwezi pupils riot after truck kills grade 12 girl, leaves 6 injured
By David Chongo in Solwezi
Sat 06 Feb. 2010, 04:00 CAT

A Solwezi Technical High School Grade 12 has died while six others are nursing injuries after a Toyota light truck registration number ACJ 7115 belonging to JC Bousfield of Chingola rammed into them as they were on a road run along Kansanshi Road near Kansanshi Mine main gate.

Meanwhile, police led by North Western Province commanding officer Fabian Katiba, had to be swiftly deployed to the school to cordon off the area and quell the disturbance in which five JCB trucks including the van that had hit the pupils were extensively damaged.

The trucks with damaged windscreens, deflated tires, smashed head lights and indicators and shattered side mirrors, were all stoned in front of the school as the passed.

The deceased girl, Beatrice Malisawa, was part of a group of pupils who had left the school around 04:00hours on a road run to prepare for inter-house athletics for the upcoming provincial inter schools event in March.

According to Treaty Lupeto, one of the pupils admitted to the hospital, the incident happened when one of the girls fainted and a group of colleagues surrounded her to try and help her into a vehicle the pupils had asked help from to ferry their friend back to school.

Treaty narrated that in the process they saw a light truck from about 10 metres flashing headlights in full beam heading towards the mine.

“When we were helping our friend who had fainted somewhere about 200 metres from the Kansanshi main boom (main entrance), we just saw a vehicle approaching our direction with headlights in full beam. The lights were flashed suddenly from about 10 meters, so we had little time to move, because if we had seen the lights from a good distance we could have stayed away. So this vehicle came and hit into us. Myself, I was not hit directly but I fell from the impact of the vehicle on others”, he said.

He added that after the accident, the driver of the vehicle ran away, but left the van with a running engine. The pupils then reorganised themselves and put their injured friends in the van and one of them then drove it to the hospital (which is within 2 kilometres) on the same road as the school before driving back to the school.

One teacher, who sought anonymity and was present at the time the pupils returned from the hospital, said the students then brought the light truck into the school premises and started stoning it while others wanted to set it ablaze.

They then decided to move it out and parked it across the road, blocking traffic from both sides.

It was at this point that they started stoning the loaded trucks coming from Kansanshi mine.

Initially, the pupils had resorted to only stoning vehicles belonging to JCB, in the process sparing a FQM bus, ABL 6517 which eventually got stuck on the side track after the driver took flight and bolted to avoid the rampaging pupils.

But after calm had, apparently, been restored around 08:00 hours, another group of pupils mobilised themselves in the school football pitch, went behind the school and ambushed a First Quantum Minerals bus, ABL 6495 with mine workers on it near Mushitala Basic School, smashing almost all the windows.

Police had to fire warning shots and teargas to disperse the pupils.
And police have instituted investigations to identify the ringleaders of the riot that ensued after the accident.

Labels: SOLWEZI COUNCIL, STUDENTS

posted by MrK @ 3:18 PM