Mother-of-three dies in freak accident after wheel flies off Hong Kong minibus
Driver arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving after mother of three struck by broken-off wheel that careered onto pavement
A woman pedestrian died after being struck by a runaway wheel from a moving minibus in Kwun Tong yesterday.
Lam Sau-wah, 44, a mother of three teenage children, was waiting for a bus outside Millennium City on Kwun Tong Road at about 9.45am when the front-left wheel came off the red-top minibus.
The fully loaded passenger vehicle, heading from Yau Tong to To Kwa Wan on the outer lane of Kwun Tong Road, continued to travel for about 50 metres after losing the wheel, according to police.
The 75cm-diameter wheel, weighing as much as 35kg, careered across the four-lane carriageway for about 70 metres before mounting the pavement and hitting Lam on face.
“It all happened so fast that the woman was unable to get out of the way,” said a police source.
The wheel continued for about 10 metres along the pavement and slammed into the wall of an office block. It then trundled on for up to another 40 metres before hitting a wall and coming to a stop.
Lam was taken unconscious to nearby United Christian Hospital, where she was declared dead at 10.18am.
Police later arrested the 42-year-old minibus driver on suspicion of dangerous driving causing death. He was last night granted bail pending further investigations.
Initial inspection of the wheel indicated that metal fatigue on the rim caused it to break off, according to the police source.
“The central part of the rim was torn off. The damaged part and five screws remained in the axle,” the source said.
Senior Inspector Cheng King-man, of the Kowloon East traffic unit, said the driver thought he had a burst tyre before noticing the wheel had come off. He said police were investigating when the 10-year-old minibus received its last annual inspection.
The dead woman worked as an assistant at the To Kwa Wan culinary centre of German Pool (Hong Kong) for more than three years. At the time of the tragic accident, she was on her way to the office after buying food in Kwun Tong.
A spokeswoman said the company was shocked by Lam’s death and would offer any assistance it could to her family.
A number of similar incidents have happened in Hong Kong in previous years.
In December 2013, an elderly hawker sustained serious injuries and six other people were slightly injured when they were struck by a wheel which broke off from a moving dump truck on a flyover in Tai Kok Tsui.
In 2005, a 68-year-old man in Shau Kei Wan was crushed to death when a wheel broke free from a dump truck and fell from a flyover before hitting him.
Engineer Lo Kok-keung, of Hong Kong Polytechnic University’s mechanical engineering department, estimated the impact that killed Lam could have reached about 1,000-pound force, as the wheel was travelling at 50km/h.
“A wheel usually breaks off from a vehicle as its screws snap. It is rare for a wheel’s rim to be damaged like this,” he said, adding that good maintenance and regular checks could prevent an accident like this.
