Surviving driver in Dompoase carnage jailed 12 months

A Cape Coast circuit court has sentenced a 45-year old driver, Mark Mireku, over an accident that claimed 34 lives last January.

Mark Mireku was found guilty of negligently causing harm and dangerous driving in the carnage that triggered national outcry over road accidents.

SPECIAL REPORT: The faces behind the fatality statistics in Dompoase road carnage

The commercial driver was in charge of the registered Hyundai bus when it crashed head-on with another bus on 14th January 2020 on the Dompoase stretch of the Elmina-Komenda section of an inter-city highway.

The fatalities include an eight-month-old baby and her parents. In at least one case, an entire nuclear family were nearly wiped in the accident.

Some eyewitnesses had blamed the surviving driver whom they claimed, tried to overtake another vehicle but failed.

‘I was in 2nd gear’ – Surviving driver in Dompoase accident denies over-taking claims

The surviving driver in a gory road carnage refuted the reports.

“It’s not true that I was overtaking another car. I was even on the second gear and that can’t be a speeding gear” the driver had said from his hospital bed at the Cape Coast Teaching Hospital in the Central region.

“It wasn’t easy. It isn’t true I was overtaking any vehicle. I had to escape through the roof of the car to safety. I got injured on my chest, arm, and leg,” he said.

After several months of trial, the circuit court has delivered its judgment.

Mireku was sentenced to one-year imprisonment on 34 counts each for dangerous driving, to run concurrently.

He was also fined GH¢17, 280 or in default serve (12 years) on 18 counts each of negligently causing harm.

Additionally, the court banned him for life from operating as a commercial driver.