Moscow bus plunges into pedestrian underpass - 5 killed

TASS
Mon, 25 Dec 2017 15:32 UTC

At least four people were killed as a bus plunged into a pedestrian underpass near a metro station in western Moscow

© Mikhail Pochuev/TASS

At least four people were killed and eleven others were wounded as the bus plunged into a pedestrian underpass near a metro station in western Moscow, a source in the city emergencies services said.

The bus plunged into a pedestrian underpass near the Slavyansky Bulvar metro station at 2.50 p.m. Moscow Time when a large number of people were there.

The accident has nothing to do with a ramming attack, a law enforcement source told TASS. "Terror attack is ruled out. The driver failed to control his vehicle," the source said.

The driver has been detained. Police are considering two theories: the driver either failed to control his vehicle or a technical malfunction.

The Interior Ministry's press service in Moscow has confirmed the death of four people in the accident. One person has been rescued and is in a serious condition now.

The driver has been working for the company for 17 years and received his license more than 30 years ago.

Comment: A dozen others were injured in the crash.

Witnesses told RT that the bus, which was about to run its usual route, suddenly accelerated and ran across the sidewalk and right into the underground passage. The passengers of the vehicle were not harmed in the incident, one of them said.

The driver has been identified as 58-year-old Viktor Tikhonov:

Reportedly injured in the incident, Tikhonov was taken to hospital where he was questioned by police.

"There were three people on the bus and I had to wait 15 minutes to resume driving," Mash quotes the driver as saying. However, another bus stopped behind Tikhonov's and he wanted to move the vehicle to give way to it.

"When I took the handbrake off, the bus drove off. I did everything to stop it, but it wouldn't stop. The vehicle is operated with an automatic stick, so I could do nothing," he added.

Rejecting speculation that Tikhonov might have been intoxicated at the time of the incident, his son, Aleksey, said that his father never drank at work. "We had breakfast early in the morning. My father wasn't stressed or tired," Aleksey Tikhonov said, as cited by Mash.

According to the driver's supervisor, he might have fallen asleep and pushed the gas pedal accidentally.

The supervisor also told RT that the driver had started his shift at 1:30pm on Monday, about two hours before the crash. He also said that the driver had worked normal shifts of 11 hours for the past two days. The director of the bus company is at the scene of the accident, he added.

The Moscow Region branch of the Transport Ministry said that the bus was in working order before the beginning of the shift on Monday. No anomalies in the condition of the driver had been established either, it added.

However, one of the passengers claims the driver was acting with malicious intent:

The witness told the Russian media that he was sitting next to the driver and "saw how he did it on purpose." The incident occurred at around 14:50 local time, the passenger recalled, adding that he asked the driver when the bus was going to move out and received the reply: "I'll move at 15:00."

"He seemed calm," the man said of the driver. "Suddenly, for no reason he stepped on the gas and drove out into the sidewalk... I was surprised, there was a bus ahead of him, which he could've driven into if he wanted to stop, or the trees. But he deliberately drove [into the underpass]," he added.

"He drove into the underpass, right there... ramming people... there were so many people under the bus," the witness said, adding that the five or six passenger on the bus, including himself, were unharmed.