At least two people died and another 49 were injured when a busload of Seventh-day Adventists crashed en route to a funeral in Kenya on Sunday.
The bus was carrying 58 church members from the Kibera Seventh-day Adventist Church in the country’s capital, Nairobi, to the funeral service in Homa Bay County, located about 225 miles (360 kilometers) to the west.
The driver lost control of the 62-seat bus after the brakes failed on a steep stretch of the Naivasha-Nairobi highway, passenger Nicholas Adipo told Kenya’s Daily Nation newspaper.
Adipo said he sensed that the passengers were in danger when the bus started hurtling down the road at a high speed. He said the driver steered the bus off the road to avoid striking other vehicles.
“He swerved from the tarmac as he avoided hitting vehicles ahead of him and oncoming traffic,” he said.
Adipo said the bus skidded, overturned, and then slid more than 100 yards (meters).
Newspaper photos from the accident scene show an orange-and-blue Isuzu bus lying on its side beside the road. People that the newspaper identified only as “good Samaritans” can be seen pulling passengers out of the bus.
“I was lucky to have escaped unhurt and was among those pulling my church mates trapped inside the bus,” Adipo said.
The two dead passengers included a young child, the newspaper said. Four of the injured passengers were hospitalized in serious condition in Nairobi.
Further details about the deceased passengers and the funeral that the church members planned to attend were not immediately available.
“May we pray for the quick recovery of the injured and solace to the family that lost their kid,” local church leaders said in a statement on the Facebook page of the Mt. Kenya West Station, an administrative arm of the Adventist Church’s Central Kenya Conference.
