Nithi Bridge Accident: Driver's wife recounts his last moments with family

Addressing journalists on Monday, Mama Mercy said she had last spoken with her husband, Mzee Simba, over the weekend while visiting their daughter who is in boarding school.

“I had attended a parent’s meeting at our daughter’s school and he actually spoke to her and promised to send her money and since then we had not spoken again. His phone was not going through,” she said.

“Later in the evening, I was called by people asking me if it was true that a bus in Meru had been involved in an accident with Mzee Simba on board… But I couldn’t confirm until I watched the 9 o’clock news.”

She was speaking outside the bus company’s offices where she had gone to confirm that her husband was indeed the one behind the wheel of the ill-fated bus.

Mama Mercy said her husband had been jobless after being laid off owing to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even after the situation eased and buses were back on the road, she claimed that the family has been through hard times because her husband had been going for months without pay.

“In the past few months since February it has been hard for us because they have not been paid since. He used to come home from work but with no money,” she narrated.

The number of people who died in the 6:30 pm crash rose to 30 on Monday morning, after six more bodies were retrieved from the wreckage. 

Police officers and rescue teams at the accident scene said the bus likely lost brakes, hitting an oncoming vehicle before plunging 40 feet into the river below. 

Mama Mercy additionally claimed her husband had previously raised concerns about the bus’ brakes: “He had been complaining about the state of the bus for a while now. He spent a lot of time at the garage with that bus.”

Tharaka Nithi County Commissioner Nobert Komora on Monday said 13 other passengers were nursing critical injuries as the search for more bodies which might still be remaining in the river entered the second day.

Meanwhile, the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) has suspended all operations of Modern Coast.

In a statement on Monday, NTSA said the company's fleet of 31 buses had been grounded as probe into the deadly crash ensues.