4 dead in Zamboanga City highway accident

COTABATO CITY — Four laborers died in a highway accident that involved two cargo trucks in Barangay Licomo, Zamboanga City on Tuesday morning.

Quoting an initial report from the Zamboanga City Police Office, radio news on Tuesday identified the fatalities as Roseller Tomotong, Ariel Lipay, Bobong Magat and a certain Noli, who were together in a truck loaded with some 30 pigs from Zamboanga Del Norte province. They were about to deliver the pigs to a buyer in Zamboanga City.

The ZCPO said that the truck carrying the victims and the livestock they were to supposed sell to a contact, was driven by Herbert Arcilla Dela Rosa. It hit the rear of another truck maneuvering in reverse from an intersection in a portion of the highway in Sitio Tigbao in Barangay Licomo.

Dela Rosa’s truck swerved after it rammed the other truck toward the side of the highway and hit a post of the Zamboanga City Electric Cooperative.

The driver of the smaller truck that figured in the accident, Elowino Molina Lorenzo, was left unscathed.

The badly injured Dela Rosa was rushed to a nearby hospital by emergency responders, according to the ZCPO.

Some of the pigs on the cargo deck of Dela Rosa’s truck fell on the concrete pavement and got killed too, the police report that reached media outfits in central Mindanao, said.