Velike Pcelice: lorry with timber crashes into family home, passenger killed at the scene
In a village near Kragujevac at around 5pm a lorry came off the road, broke through a fence and hit a house in which no-one was at home; the driver was seriously injured.
A serious traffic accident took place at around 5pm in the village of Velike Pcelice near Kragujevac, in which a man sitting in the passenger seat of a lorry carrying timber was killed, while the driver suffered serious bodily injuries. The lorry, according to initial information, came off the old road leading to the Denkovac Monastery, broke through a fence and slid into a yard, before striking a family home.
The identity of the dead passenger has not been officially released, the Kragujevac Police Administration says. The driver of the lorry was rushed to Kragujevac University Clinical Centre, where he was given medical assistance. According to unofficial sources, the driver is in intensive care with life-threatening injuries, though his vital functions are not constantly at risk.
Six firefighters from the Kragujevac Emergency Situations Directorate, with two vehicles, intervened at the scene. Their task was to extract the people trapped in the crushed cab of the vehicle and to remove the lorry from the house so that the on-site investigation could be carried out. The operation lasted around an hour and a half, sources close to the intervention say.
The owners of the family home were, fortunately, not in the residential part of the building at the moment of the accident, which prevented further casualties. According to a neighbour, the household had spent the afternoon visiting relatives in the next village, while only a dog was in the yard, and it too was unhurt. The house suffered significant damage to the ground-floor walls, but the structure is not at risk.
Traffic police and an accident expert appointed from the list of standing court experts at the Higher Court in Kragujevac carried out the on-site investigation. On the order of the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Kragujevac, a pre-criminal investigation has been opened, the qualification of which will be established only on receipt of the experts’ findings. All relevant circumstances are being considered, including the condition of the vehicle, the speed of travel and the possible involvement of other factors.
What is known about the condition of the road to the Denkovac Monastery?
The old road leading to the Denkovac Monastery, on which the accident took place, is not part of the trunk-road network and falls under the jurisdiction of the local administration of the city of Kragujevac. According to the Kragujevac Directorate for Construction and Development, the stretch is in the category of local roads with the lowest level of reconstruction in the past three years.
According to local police data, several traffic accidents have been recorded on the same stretch over the past five years, two of which ended in fatalities. The question of reconstructing this stretch has been raised on several occasions at City Assembly sessions, but the work has not so far been carried out.
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