4 die in 2 gruesome crashes

2008-07-24 10:00

Tisha Steyn

George - Two horror crashes, which happened shortly after one another, claimed the lives of four people in the Southern Cape on Wednesday.

Lin Biermann, 53, wife of local lawyer Neels Biermann, and her daughter, Raquel Purdon, 19, died at about 08:15 when a Mercedes truck, heavily laden with fertiliser, crashed into their Hyundai.

They were on their way to work from Kleinkrantz where they lived.

The truck's brakes allegedly failed on the long downhill road on the Kaaiman's Pass, and the driver lost control of the vehicle.

The victims, who were heading in the opposite direction, were trapped under the truck. The vehicles were dragged about 300m across the road before they crashed through the road barriers and fell down the slope.

Car pinned under engine

"I was on my way to Saasveld when the truck with the car pinned under the engine, came from up front," said Pieter Bekker, a witness. "I swerved and the truck hit my bakkie's left back side and the bakkie swivelled around.

"I saw how the truck and the car slid across the road and down the slope. The truck fell into the river below and the car stopped about 8m from the road on the slope.

"The car's roof was torn off. One of the other people who had stopped beside the road, found the body of the daughter about 35m from the car. I found the woman's body in the car. She had been crushed. If I had swerved a second later, I would have been dead. It is only by the grace of God that I am alive," he said.

Lin worked at her husband's legal firm and Purdon, who matriculated last year from York High School, worked at RAW Steel.

The Cape Son reported that Biermann drove past the accident scene, unaware that his wife and her daughter were involved.

The driver of the truck, Luwayne Michael Booysen, 28, of Mossel Bay, was admitted to George Hospital with light injuries.

2 die, 16 hurt as truck, bakkie collide

In another incident at 08:25, two people died and sixteen were injured when a contractor's truck on its way from Mossel Bay to Oubaai, collided with a bakkie and overturned.

"Injured people lay all over the ground. The names of the deceased have not yet been made public," said Captain Jannie Pio, acting station commander of the Groot Brak River police station.

The father and two children, aged seven and five years old, who were in the Ford Bantam bakkie, were unhurt.

- Die Burger