MORE EWNS, PAMPANGA

Bus driver in mishap faces homicide raps
By George Trillo

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – Police filed charges of reckless imprudence resulting to multiple homicide and serious physical injuries and damage to property against the driver of the passenger bus that rammed a Toyota Revo that killed five people Oct. 30 along the North Luzon Expressway in Mabalacat, Pampanga.

This, as the Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board grounded 10 units of the bus company that operates the Manila-Tarlac-Pangasinan and vice versa route.

Senior Supt. Keith Ernald Singian, Pampanga police director, said Mabalacat police filed the charges against bus driver Bernardo Santos, 34, of Mangaldan, Pangasinan who was among the more than 60 injured in the collision and who is still confined at the Angeles University Foundation Memorial Hospital.

The LTFRB field office in Dagupan City served the 30-day cease and desist order on the operator of Fermina Express pending the result of a separate investigation being conducted by the board.

The fatalities in the accident were identified as Ruth Diane Ferrer, 22, a law student of Ateneo de Manila University and driver of the Toyota Revo with license plate XHE-829, her companion Fr. Domingo Moraleda, 66, of Claret Formation School. Also killed were bus passengers Aurelia Orio Montera, 56, of San Juan City; Adela Padua, 63, of Quezon City, and a still unidentified female commuter.

Mabalacat police investigators said the northbound Fermina Express bus, driven by Santos, with license plate NYN-688 left Cubao in Quezon City and was on its way to San Carlos City in Pangasinan when the collision occurred at around 12 noon in Barangay Mabiga, Mabalacat.

Investigators said the bus was overtaking another vehicle and had occupied the lane of the Revo when the mishap happened.

“We will review the record of the bus company and if we find that it had already three accidents we have no recourse but to cancel its franchise to operate,” said LTFRB chairman Thompson Lantion.

The LTFRB is also investigating reports that the bus was overloaded when the accident happened.

LTFRB officials have also suspended the operations of the Joanna Jesh Bus Lines that operates in Metro Manila after two of its buses were involved in an accident along EDSA in Quezon City, which killed one person and wounded two others.


Dengue claims lives of 40 persons in Central Luzon
By George Trillo

SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga – The Department of Health in Central Luzon Tuesday that 40 persons, mostly girls under 15 years of age, died of mosquito-caused dengue fever in the region this year.

“It’s rather high,” nurse Marilou Pajarillaga of the DOH’s regional epidiomology service unit told newsmen.

Latest records have indicated 4,768 dengue cases in Central Luzon so far this year, even as Pajarillaga noted three dengue strains affecting the victims.

Pajarillaga said experts have yet to come out with some explanation on the fact that most of the fatalities are girls below 15 years old.

She cited statistics showing the deaths this year include four girls within the age bracket one to five years, 12 in the six to 10 bracket, 10 in the 11 to 15 bracket, three each in the 16 to 20 and the 21 to 25 brackets, and two aged more than 25.

This, amid figures showing only two boys in the fatalities under the one to five-year-old bracket, three in the six to 10 bracket, and one in the 11 to 15 bracket. No males above 15 years of age was reported to have died of dengue in the region so far this year.

Pajarillaga said that since January, Pampanga topped the list of the number of dengue cases at 1,838, followed by Bulacan with 1,195, Nueva Ecija with 740, Zambales with 393, Tarlac with 336, Bataan with 247, and Aurora with only 19.