PUTRAJAYA: Police are investigating whether the driver of the bus involved in a fatal crash in Sepang on Sunday had been racing with another bus.
KLIA police chief Assistant Commissioner Zulkifli Adamshah said this followed a statement taken from one of the survivors of the crash that the driver seemed to be racing with another bus.
However, he said nothing could be confirmed as none of the other survivors whose statements had also been recorded had mentioned this.
Zulkifli, however, confirmed that police believe the bus was, at the time of the crash, being driven at high speed.
This, he said, was due to all the witnesses having told police that they thought the bus driver had been speeding.
However, this too could not be taken as fact as closed-circuit television cameras located near the scene were too far away from the accident location.
“We are looking at all CCTV recordings but none so far are clear enough to reveal anything,” he said.
Zulkifli said police were still waiting for the Computerised Vehicle Inspection Centre (Puspakom) to take the wreck of the bus for inspection.
“The bus is still here. We are waiting for them to take the vehicle for inspection. We are also waiting for Puspakom to reveal if the brakes of the bus were faulty because there weren’t any skid marks on the road to show that the driver had tried to stop the vehicle from plunging into the storm drain,” he added.
The 11.10pm incident saw nine people killed at the scene and three more succumbing to injuries in hospitals. All other passengers were injured to varying degrees, including several critically.
The bus plunged into a 10m-deep storm drain near the MAS Kargo Complex of the Kuala Lumpur International Airport.
The dead included the 43-year-old Malaysian driver, who was transporting 43 foreign contract workers to the cargo complex for their midnight shift.