Transport activity along Eldoret-Webuye highway was disrupted for hours following a grisly accident involving a transit truck and motorcycle boda boda near Lwandeti trading centre in Matete.
Eyewitnesses told West media the accident occurred when the fuel truck heading towards Eldoret, veered off the road before it hit the motorbike, killing both the rider and his passenger on spot.
“The tanker’s driver was attempting to overtake from the wrong side, there were two speeding trucks ahead of him and he rammed the motorcycle from behind,” reported the source, adding the driver did not stop at the scene.
However, the driver was not lucky to escape as area boda boda operators alarmed their colleagues at Mukhonje trading centre, “Who managed to stop the runaway truck,” added the source.
But the timely arrival of police officers from Matete saved the driver from hands of irate boda boda operators and hundreds of locals who were about to attack him.
The enraged riders and locals barricaded that section of the road using heavy boulders for about two hours in protest of what they described as careless driving by long distance drivers.
“Our colleague was riding on the right side, in fact, he was in the pedestrian lane,” lamented one of the boda boda operators.
Police officers managed to quell the protesters before normal business was restored in the area.
One of the deceased was a third-year education student at Masinde Muliro University of Science and Technology (MMUST).
The late was son to Lwandeti location chief, Mr. Francis Lumbasi Munialo who described the death of his last born son as a great loss to the family.
“He died just two hundred metres away from home,” said the local administrator, revealing the deceased had just boarded the fateful motorbike when tragedy struck.
The two bodies were removed to Webuye Sub County Hospital morgue.