Stepojevac crash kills driver, injures woman and child
Two cars collided head-on on the Ibarska highway through Stepojevac six minutes after midnight. The Alfa Romeo driver died at the scene and firefighters cut the wreck open to reach three survivors.
The call that reached the fire and rescue unit in Lazarevac just after midnight was short: two cars had collided and people were trapped inside. The time was 12:06 a.m. on July 31, on the stretch of the Ibarska highway that runs through Stepojevac, south of Belgrade. Fifteen minutes later, rescuers were cutting metal apart at that spot.
The driver of the Alfa Romeo, identified only as S. V. (37), was killed. His injuries were severe enough that he died before he could be moved. Two passengers from his car, S. M. (35) and a child, M. Lj. (10), were hurt, as was the driver of the Audi, A. M. (22).
How the rescue unfolded
The Lazarevac Fire and Rescue Unit reached the site at 12:21 a.m. Nobody inside could get out unaided, so the crushed bodywork had to be cut away first.
Serbia’s Interior Ministry (MUP), through its Emergency Situations Sector, said in a statement:
six firefighter-rescuers with two vehicles took part in the intervention, pulling the injured out of the cars
Paramedics from the Lazarevac health centre took over from there. All three injured people were conscious when they were driven to the Emergency Centre in Belgrade for further treatment.
Who was involved in the collision?
Two passenger cars were in the crash, an Audi and an Alfa Romeo. The Audi was driven by a 22-year-old man; the Alfa was driven by the 37-year-old who died.
The other two casualties were passengers in the Alfa. Data released after formal identification describe a 35-year-old woman and a 10-year-old child with the initials M. Lj.
The child is not named, and no detail that could identify the child is being published. Traffic police are still establishing how the two cars ended up in a head-on impact, and a prosecutor attended the on-site investigation.
Why the first figures did not match
In the hours immediately after the crash, before identities were confirmed, some outlets reported that the dead driver was 39 and that the injured child was 15. Those were preliminary numbers.
Once police completed the identification, the figures settled at 37 for the driver and 10 for the child. The difference matters, because the age of an injured child changes how the case is reported and how the child is protected in coverage.
A road that does not go quiet
The Stepojevac section of the Ibarska highway cuts through a populated area, and traffic on it does not stop overnight. This crash happened at the hour with the least traffic of the whole day, which points at speed and night visibility rather than congestion.
We covered that ground earlier, in a report on four days of intensified traffic enforcement across Serbia, an operation aimed squarely at night driving, speeding and alcohol. A head-on collision between two cars on the same lane is the outcome those checks are meant to prevent.
Road closed until 4 a.m.
Because of the severity of the crash and the investigation that followed, that section of the Ibarska highway was fully closed to traffic. It reopened around 4 a.m., once the wrecks had been removed from the carriageway.
Any criminal or misdemeanour classification will depend on the findings of the on-site investigation and on expert analysis of the vehicles. Until then, the cause is officially listed as a circumstance still being established.
