2-year-old, one other feared dead in Ekiti auto crash

Araromi area of Ikere-Ekiti, headquarters of Ikere Local Government Area of Ekiti State, was thrown into mourning late on Wednesday afternoon as a Toyota Forerunner Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) crashed into a shop.

Witnesses told Metro that a woman and her two-year-old daughter, who they said had just returned from school, were hit by the vehicle, and claimed that the girl died on the spot.

The witnesses also said that another man they could not immediately identify, also died in the accident.

The witnesses told Metro that the Toyota vehicle with registration number: Lagos, KSF 939 FF,  which was coming from Ise-Ekiti, lost control and ran through the shop attached to a residential building.

The vehicle had crashed through the shop and into a parked Mitsubishi Axiom car, said to belong to Mr. Oluwayemi Ojo, a lawyer resident in the same Araromi area.

Ojo said the vehicle had knocked down four persons before crashing into his own vehicle, which eventually stopped it.

He claimed that the driver of the Toyota “was actually on a very high speed and probably lost control and veered off the road into the building.”

Ojo added that “it knocked down four persons, including a woman and her  less than two-year-old girl who was coming from the school.

“It was my vehicle, parked here, that stopped it from going further to knock down other people. We just learnt that two out of the four people that we made effort to rescue and rushed to the hospital are dead. One of them is a little girl of less than two.

“People said the driver of the offending vehicle is an official of the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) in Ekiti State. He was conveying some corps members who quickly removed their belongings from the vehicle and left the scene. Our people did not attack any of them because they were corps members.”

None of the sympathisers could identify the driver of the errant vehicle, while armed policemen numbering about six, including some in plain clothes, were seen at the scene.

The area was filled with sympathisers who milled around the damaged building, while destroyed property, including the food basket of the child, whose name was given as ‘Semilore, littered the accident scene.