A TOUR bus ran over and killed a pedestrian in a horrific "double" accident yesterday.
An onlooker told of how he shouted and waved to alert the driver when he unknowingly mowed down the victim at the intersection of Geylang Lorong 14 and Talma Road.
After stopping the vehicle, he then unwittingly reversed the bus and ran over the man, who is believed to be a Malaysian in his 30s.
Police said they received a call about the incident at 8.17am. The driver was subsequently arrested and investigations were under way last night.
The victim was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
Cleaner Amirudin Salim, 29, said he heard a loud scream while working at a condominium along the road.
He saw a man pinned under the back wheel of the tour bus, which was turning onto Talma Road, and starting waving and shouting for the driver to stop.
"I screamed at the uncle and waved at him many times to stop," said Mr Amirudin.
Instead, the driver reversed the bus and turned to Mr Amirudin. "He then showed me the hand sign for 'what' and I told him there was somebody under the bus." According to Mr Amirudin, the driver then got off the bus, squatted down for a look and was shocked to see what had happened.
Mr Amirudin, who at this point had come to the main road, said the driver was very quiet and was pacing back and forth between the bus and a nearby hotel. He was also making multiple phone calls.
"I asked him if he had called the police and he just said 'yes, yes,'" said the cleaner.
The Straits Times understands police later retrieved video footage from a nearby condo closed-circuit television camera that had recorded the accident.
Mr Alvin Tan, the operations manager of Sun-Gee Travel, the bus owner, told The Straits Times that the driver, a 52-year-old known as "Ah Koon", had been going to pick up passengers from a nearby hotel for a city tour.
He said Ah Koon had over a decade of driving experience and had been with the company for more than a year.
Mr Tan said he received a call from the driver at about 8.30am, after which a manager was dispatched to the scene to assist him and the police. "It's unfortunate but nobody wanted it to happen," he said.
