The Venice bus driver may have become ill before the fatal crash

News

by Ally Griffin

The driver of the bus that crashed near Venice, Italy, killing 21 people, may have suffered a medical emergency before veering off an overpass, sending the vehicle falling more than 30 feet, officials said, with the nationalities of those killed revealed on Sunday. Wednesday.

Authorities launched an investigation into the fiery crash after learning that 40-year-old driver Alberto Rizzuto, who was among those killed, had only been a few hours into his shift when the tragedy occurred just before 8 p.m. on a straight, frequently traveled road. In the Mestre area.

A video clip of the incident shows that no other vehicle contacted the bus that was transporting foreign tourists to the camp site before it fell in an area close to the railway lines and caught fire.

Prosecutors said the bus hit the fence for more than 150 feet before it went through the bridge, went off the bridge and landed upside down on the ground below.

The city-owned bus was only a year old, and Rizzuto had worked for the bus company for seven years and had a perfect driving record, according to officials.

City Mayor Luigi Brugnaro described the incident as “inexplicable” while other officials believe the cause may be due to a medical accident.

“We assume that the driver may have contracted the disease,” Luca Zaia, head of the Veneto region, told RTL 102.5 radio.

Investigators hope to recover video from cameras on board the bus to reveal what happened inside before the fatal accident.

Officials are also looking into whether the bus’s electric battery contributed to the fire that ignited the wreck. However, Brugnaro warned that the cause of the accident “has nothing to do with the car being electric.”

Officials said on Wednesday that the driver was the only Italian killed in the accident. The remaining dead include nine Ukrainians, four Romanians, three Germans, two Portuguese, one Croat and one South African.

15 other people were injured, most of them with fractures and burns. Four Ukrainians were injured – including a 3-year-old girl who suffered serious burns – as well as travelers from Spain, Austria, France, Croatia and Germany.

Nine victims remained in the intensive care unit on Wednesday.

The tourists had spent the day sightseeing along Venice’s famous canals and were returning to the city’s Hu Venezia Camping for a 15-minute bus ride when disaster struck.

Brugnaro previously described the crash scene as “horrific.”

“I will never forget what I saw for the rest of my life,” he said. He told the Associated Press From his office in Mestre. “Seeing all those people crammed into the bus there, it’s something you can’t describe.”

Some of the first to arrive at the scene were good Samaritans who lived near the crash site and heard a bang followed by screaming.

Roommates and long-time Italian residents Godsteem Erheniden, 30, from Nigeria, and Boubacar Toure, 27, from Gambia, were having dinner in an apartment overlooking the busy bridge when they saw the wreckage below.

Erheneden rushed onto the bus — past the driver, who he said was already dead — and carried a woman and a man on his shoulders, he told the Venice daily newspaper Il Gazzettino.

“The woman was screaming, ‘My daughter, my daughter,’ so I went back inside. I saw this girl who must have been two years old,” he said, reminding me of his son, who was about the same age. “It was terrible. I don’t know if she survived. I thought she was alive but when rescuers arrived they took her away immediately.

They added that the men tried to put out the fire with fire extinguishers, but the fire was very strong.

The mayor praised the pair.

“They threw themselves into the fire to save these people. They are true heroes of our time,” Brugnaro said.

With mail wires