Johannesburg | Monday
LAWYERS representing the bus driver who was blamed for the accident in which 27 elderly British passengers and a South African tour guide were killed near Lydenburg in 1999 were still trying to track him down on Monday to inform him that his sentence had been overturned on Friday.
Arno Botha of Botha and Sutherland Attorneys said that he might have to go to the East Rand to get in contact with 47-year-old Titus Dube to give him the ”good news”.
”At the moment we do not know what his telephone number is but we do know the address so we might have to drive through to give him the news,” he said.
The state on Friday overturned Dube’s six-year sentence on the grounds that he acted reasonably. Dube had been on R500 bail since the accident occurred.
”The court found that this man was not a criminal. He has an excellent record. He just panicked and pressed the petrol instead on the brakes,” Botha said.
Twenty-seven people died instantly and nine others including Dube were injured, when the Springbok-Atlas coach hit a bank at the bottom of the steep Long Tom pass, five kilometres from Lydenburg, in Eastern Mpumalanga, on September 27 1999.
The 28th victim died in hospital a month later.
Botha on Monday said Dube was no longer working as a bus driver as he became ”quite sick” after the accident. – Sapa