Five die, 14 hurt in taxi, truck tragedy
IT WAS a hectic day for paramedics in Durban yesterday.
While some attended to the tragedy at the naval base, others fought their way through jammed roads to the N3 at Westville where a taxi was crushed between two trucks.
Five taxi occupants died, 11 were injured as well as three passengers in the truck.
In Glenwood, a paramedic was hijacked while her husband was en route to the accident.
“I was in the traffic arriving at the Westville accident, opposite the Pavilion, when my wife called, frantic, to say she had been hijacked,” said Garrith Jamieson, who owns the Rescue Care outfit with his wife, Jodi. “Even though I am a paramedic, I felt helpless.”
Jodi had been fetching their daughter, Emma, from her preschool. She said men approached her from behind as she was placing her child in a car seat.
“They threw me to the floor and I screamed ‘just give me my child’.”
She was aware of one of them having something in his hands but could not work out what it was.
Jodi added that she had been at many ghastly scenes since qualifying as a medic 13 years ago. She said that one of their employees had been stabbed by a taxi driver while attending to patients at an accident scene.
“It’s very different being on the other side,” Jodi said.
The vehicle was later found in KwaMashu, said Garrith, who is an advanced life-support medic.
He said the temporary loss of the car paled into insignificance against the thought of his family being harmed.
Garrith was able to leave the Westville scene to his colleagues to go to his family, but later returned to the scene where he reported that traffic on the Durban-bound N3 was confined to one lane.
Three of the taxi passengers who died were women and two were men.
The condition of those injured ranged from minor to critical.
The jaws of life had to be used on both vehicles.
No one from the second truck was injured.