Chilling Video Shows TUM Bus Before Deadly Crash
Two students from the Technical University of Mombasa lost their lives on Friday in a tragic road accident along the Kisumu-Nairobi highway.
The young men were travelling with colleagues to Awasi in Kisumu County to attend the burial of Elvis ‘Beast’ Otieno, the institution’s students’ body chairman who had passed away two weeks earlier. What began as a journey of solidarity and farewell ended in further sorrow when their university bus was involved in a head-on collision with a private car.
Amateur video footage circulating online captures the tense moments leading up to the crash. It shows several students perched dangerously on the roof of the moving bus while others lean out of the windows as the vehicle travels at speed. At approximately half past twelve in the afternoon the bus collided with a salon car, killing two male students instantly. The images have deepened public concern over the safety of the convoy that day.
Joel Awino, the university’s Dean of Students, confirmed the details of the tragedy. “We picked the body from Aga Khan Hospital on our way to Awasi, our buses had a head-on collision with a salon car, we lost two male students, it happened at 12:30,” he stated. Thirty-two other passengers sustained injuries, with seventeen receiving treatment at Jaramogi Oginga Odinga Teaching and Referral Hospital and a further fifteen admitted at Lisa Hospital in Ahero.
A student who survived the incident, Brian Ochieng, described the sequence of events. “The vehicle dogged a small car and lost control and fell,” he said. University President Joseph Omolo added context to the purpose of the trip: “We had come to give Beast a decent send-off, we were together with the team, we were waiting for the convoy at Ngere.” Their accounts paint a picture of a group determined to honour a fallen peer, only to be overtaken by disaster.
Despite the accident, the burial of Elvis Otieno proceeded as planned in Awasi later that day. Among those present to pay their respects was Embakasi East Member of Parliament Babu Owino. The dual loss has left the university community in mourning once again, as families and students grapple with the sudden deaths of two more young lives cut short on a journey meant to bring closure.
