Beginning the 800km overnight journey between London and Aberdeen, the travelers on National Express service 592 were already weary. It was wet and the coach did not set off from London Victoria coach station until 10:30pm on Wednesday. When it left London Heathrow airport -- half an hour late because of a problem with baggage -- many of the 65 passengers were on the edge of sleep.
And then disaster. Passenger Gordon Welsh, 73, a retired British Telecom technician who had been on the upper deck, told his daughter Jackie that the coach became destabilized on the curved slip road linking the M4 motorway to the northbound M25 motorway.
"Dad felt that they touched the kerb, he felt a bump," she said.
"The driver lost control and the bus had gone to the left," she added.
The vehicle toppled onto its side and slid across the carriageway, leaving two passengers dead and up to 60 injured. Many had limbs severed and others had to be cut free from the wreckage. One woman set out with her two children, a girl aged seven months and a three-and-a-half year old boy. All three are believed to have lost arms or legs. After the impact passengers, many of whom were not wearing seatbelts, were hurled on to hard surfaces, into each other and through windows. Glass and debris from the coach flew along the interior, causing dreadful injuries.
On Thursday, as the 40-year-old coach driver was arrested on suspicion of dangerous driving, one of the dead was named as Christina Toner, 76, of Dundee.
Welsh, who had been in London with relatives celebrating his golden wedding anniversary, saw his wife Audrey, 70, thrown past him out of her seat. She suffered a dislocated hip and fractured ribs.
A friend of one injured passenger, Eddie Loney, 37, who was returning to Scotland, said Loney had told him what he believed had happened when he visited him in hospital. Loney believed "the coach was going too fast, it was half an hour late leaving Heathrow and the driver was trying to make up for lost time. He was going around the bend and he had taken it too fast. He lost the back end one way and then the other way and then the third time it headed back towards the central reservation."
Michael Milbourne, 69, was traveling back to his home in Symington, Ayrshire, in south west Scotland, after spending time with relatives in London. He suffered a fractured vertebra.
His stepbrother James Lant, 51, spent all day with him at the hospital. Lant said: "He just said they were coming off the main road when the coach veered to the left then right and then it just lost control. There were people distressed all around him and inside the coach people were on top of one another. He was afraid the man next to him might have been dead because he had a glazed look on his face."
"He did say there was a possibility the coach was going a bit too fast in wet conditions. The driver might have been making up some time because they were running a bit late," he said.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia