A 35-year-old woman and her 8-year-old son died at Tambaram Sanatorium on Tuesday morning after they were hit by a speeding vehicle.
For more details, see infographic at left.
According to the police, the victims — B. Alamelu of Kunnam, Perambalur district, and her son Veeramani — were crossing the road to Government Hospital of Thoracic Medicine on Grand Southern Trunk Road when the accident occurred.
Alamelu was bringing her son for treatment at the hospital for his incessant coughing. Her uncle Marudamuthu (63) had accompanied them to Chennai. After reaching Koyambedu on Monday night the three of them had stayed with Alamelu’s husband, Babu who works as a supplier in a roadside eatery.
On Tuesday, the three of them took a MTC bus from Koyambedu and got down at the bus stop opposite the hospital around 7 a.m. They were crossing the road when the signal for pedestrians was on, when a Tata Sumo vehicle, whose driver had jumped the signal, hit Alamelu and Veeramani. While the latter died on the spot, his mother succumbed to her injuries on the way to the accident trauma care at Tambaram Taluk Government Hospital in Chromepet.
Marudhamuthu escaped unhurt as he had darted across the road and was not hit by the vehicle. “It all happened within minutes. There were several vehicles waiting for the green light, but the Tata Sumo did not even slow down near the signal and hit the woman and her son,” said P. Selvaraj, an eye-witness who works in a tea stall near the accident spot.
Chromepet Traffic Police (Investigation) arrested the vehicle driver, P. Kannan (22) of Red Hills who is an employee of a private travel agency. He had dropped a group of employees working in a private company inside Madras Export Processing Zone–Special Economic Zone at Kodungaiyur and was returning to pick up another batch of employees.
A case under section 304 (ii) of IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) has been registered.
People working in restaurants and other shops around the signal opposite the hospital said many motorists paid little heed to road safety and hardly stopped for the signal. The spot had, in recent times, become accident prone, they said.
At the accident spot, the four-lane road, with a service lane and pavement on either side, has a total width of more than 150 feet.
Patients visiting the hospital, especially the elderly, who get down at the bus stop on the side of the road towards Tambaram direction found it difficult to cross at the spot, pointed out P. Elangovan, a resident of Tambaram Sanatorium.
