Authorities reduced this Tuesday from 13 to 12 the number of students who died this Monday in South Africa in a school minibus accident in which they were traveling, whose driver has been arrested, as confirmed by the Police.
The minibus was transporting students in the Vanderbijlpark area, in the south of Johannesburg (north), in the Gauteng province, where the collision of that vehicle against a truck took place.
In a statement, the Gauteng Department of Education clarified this Tuesday that the tragedy “claimed the lives of 12 students”, after raising the death toll to 13 this Monday.
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For his part, Gauteng police spokesperson Mavela Masondo confirmed that the 22-year-old school minibus driver “was arrested after being discharged from the hospital” and faces twelve charges of culpable homicide.
The driver is expected to appear before the Vanderbijlpark Magistrates Court within the next 48 hours.
Masondo also indicated that one student was discharged from the hospital, while four others remain hospitalized.
In a statement issued on Tuesday, Gauteng Health head Nomantu Nkomo-Ralehoko specified that the injured students were admitted to the intensive care unit (ICU) of Sebokeng Hospital.
“One student remains in an unstable critical condition, while the other two are in a critical but stable condition. All ICU patients are girls aged 10, 15 and 16, and the student who was airlifted is 17 years old,” explained Nkomo-Ralehko.
Gauteng Traffic Police spokesperson Sello Maremane told local media that preliminary investigations indicate that the minibus driver attempted to overtake a vehicle in front and did not notice the presence of an approaching truck, resulting in a head-on collision.
In a statement, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa expressed his “sadness” over the incident and expressed his solidarity with the families, teachers, classmates, and friends of the victims.
“Our children are the nation’s most precious asset and we must do everything possible, from complying with traffic regulations to the quality of service providers designated to transport students, to protect them,” Ramaphosa emphasized.
The accident occurred after last week the South African Minister of Transport, Barbara Creecy, pointed out that the number of deaths in traffic accidents in South Africa is a “national disgrace”.
Creecy made that comment after presenting statistics from the past Christmas holiday season in the country, in which 1,427 people died on South African roads in December, 5% less than in the same period of the previous year.
