Three in hospital after bus crashes into pole

GARDAÍ in Dublin were last night examining CCTV footage taken from a bus which crashed into a pole yesterday morning.

Three people were taken to hospital after the out-of-service double-decker Dublin Bus skidded to avoid a car, which may have broken a red light.

The bus then crashed into a pole at the junction of Northumberland Road and Haddington Road in Ballsbridge at around 4.40am.

The bus was on standby from midnight on Saturday to cater for an expected increase in demand for the Dublin Bus night link service. But a company spokesperson said it wasn’t needed and was being driven by an inspector back to a depot in Donnybrook. There were no passengers on board.

The spokesperson said it appeared from the bus’s CCTV footage that the lights were with the company’s driver. He escaped unhurt but three people in the car were taken to St Vincent’s Hospital with injuries which are not thought to be serious.

The bus was towed to the garda pound in Santry where gardaí will carry out a technical examination.

Meanwhile, a taxi driver whose minibus cab was hijacked in Dublin over the weekend, spoke yesterday of his terrifying ordeal.

Ciaran Hanlon, 43, from Navan, Co Meath, said the six men who hired his cab seemed polite.

“They knocked on the window and asked me to take them into town. They seemed OK — one of them was polite enough. I had no reason to say no to them,” the father of seven said. He picked up the men in Inchicore village at around 1.50am on Saturday. Within minutes, a row broke out in the cab between two men who began throwing punches at each other.

Mr Hanlon pulled his minibus into the side of the road and removed the two men but one of the men who remained in the cab jumped into the driver’s seat.

Mr Hanlon grabbed the steering wheel and was dragged along the road as the four men drove off at high speed. He received neck, arm and shoulder injuries.

The driver lost control about 15 minutes later and crashed and overturned the vehicle in Ballyfermot.

Two men, both in their 20s, were seriously injured. One was still in a critical condition in Beaumont Hospital last night. The other man was in St James’s Hospital where his injuries are not life-threatening.

The other youths involved fled the scene on foot.

Gardaí were planning to carry out a technical examination on the minibus yesterday.