14/04/2016
SPEEDING TAXI KILLS THREE FRIENDS
Three friends were mowed down by a speeding taxi, which left one of them stuck in the windscreen of another vehicle.
The tragedy occurred on Sunday night shortly after 10pm in Freedom Road in the Joe Slovo informal settlement near Milnerton.
Witnesses say a taxi driver in a Toyota Quantum was speeding and tried to overtake a staff van.
The van swerved, while the speeding taxi driver hit the three friends who were standing on the pavement, before crashing into a stationary Toyota Venture that was parked off the road.
The driver abandoned his Quantum and fled on foot.
Mzucumile Mgweqo, 27, Nondumiso Yakala, 29, and Nwabisa Mbekeni, 29, were pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
The impact threw Mzucumile into the windscreen of the oncoming company van.
Nwabisa’s sister Zukiswa Ntlozwana, 33, says the mom left the house shortly after 10pm to walk her friends home.
Bang
She says: “A few minutes after they left, I heard a loud bang from the road and I told my boyfriend that sounded like a very big car accident.”
A neighbour came to inform her Ndondumiso and her friends were dead.
“I couldn’t understand it because I was just with all of them 10 minutes earlier,” adds Zukiswa.
“I phoned Mzucumile and Nwabisa to ask what had happened but they didn’t answer their cellphones.”
She went to the accident scene, where she identified her sister by her shoes.
“And when I turned around I saw the arm sticking out of the windscreen and instantly recognised it as Mzu’s.
Racing
“We heard that these taxis were racing which is what happens here every weekend and we complain about it but nothing gets done.”
A devastated Ntombi Yakala, 36, said yesterday she was trying to find a way to tell her sister Nondumiso’s three children their mom was dead.
“She is leaving behind three children who will grow up without their mother,” she says.
“I hope whoever did this will be locked away, maybe it will finally teach these drivers a lesson.”
She says Mzu was from Nyanga and came to visit friends in Joe Slovo.
“Poor Mzu’s girlfriend is still pregnant and had to be hospitalised because she was not well after she heard he died.”
Homicide
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut says a case of culpable homicide is being investigated.
“No one has been arrested as yet,” he says.
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Story by Tshego Lepule
Pic by Leon Knipe
