Nine passengers nabbed for defending reckless driver

SIMBARASHE MSASANURI
Dar es Salaam

At a time when road accidents continue to claim innocent lives, mainly due to human error, police at Chalinze in Coast Region arrested nine passengers for defending a reckless driver and obstruction of justice.

The passengers who were in a bus christened Happy Nation that was traveling from Mbeya to Dar es Salaam, had to have their journeys cut short after allegedly verbally and physically attacking journalists who were coming from an assignment in Morogoro. The journalists, who were traveling in a separate bus, had alerted a traffic police officer that the driver of the Happy Nation bus had been driving recklessly, resulting in him being ticketed.

According to one of the journalists, Japhery Mjasiri, the Happy Nation bus overtook not only their bus but other vehicles at an undesignated place and, above all, the driver was speeding.

“As journalists, we know the impact of accidents and the efforts that are being put in place to curb them, so we approached a traffic police officer at Mikese along the Dar es Salaam- Morogoro road and told her to caution the driver of the bus.

“What surprised us, however, is that when the passengers in the bus were asked by the police officer whether the driver was driving recklessly, they all protected him. But, the officer went ahead to write a ticket and cautioned the driver. And, while she was still doing so, a group of passengers alighted from the bus and started shouting obscenities at us, complaining that we were delaying them unnecessarily,” he said.

He went on to point out that the impatient passengers became aggressive, shouting obscenities and threatened to beat the journalists together with their driver. “They ended up banging the windows of our bus with their fists. When the journalists realized that the situation was getting aggressive, they took their cameras and started filming and it is at that point that one camera man was beaten.”

This was also confirmed by the driver of the small bus carrying the journalists, Frank Pungu, who said he had to close his door very fast to avoid being beaten by the angry mob.

“I would like to commend the Happy Nation driver who calmed his passengers before apologizing to us for not only the reckless driving but also for the behaviour of his passengers,” he said.

When the bus left the passengers are said to have continued insulting the journalists who retaliated by calling one of the senior police officers who later on directed police officers at Chalinze to solve the case.

“When we arrived at Chalinze Police Station, we showed the police officers the video footage and still pictures of the aggressive passengers, who were nabbed and detained,” said Mjasiri before adding that this should be a lesson to other passengers that they don’t mistreat people who are trying to save their lives.

Another journalist who requested anonymity said that the attitude shown by the passengers was shocking to say the least, pointing out that their behaviour was unacceptable because “we were good Samaritans here. What we only wanted is to save their lives but what they were thinking was their destination. They thought we were delaying them while in the actual sense we were saving them.”