The Judicial Police of the Civil Guard has taken a statement this Friday from the two survivors of the bus accident that on Christmas Eve fell into the Lérez river, an accident in which seven of the eight passengers who were heading to Pontevedra and Vigo died.
The driver, Carlos Monzón, 63, and the only surviving passenger, María del Rosario González Rocha, 49, a Peruvian national, stated that they were wearing their seatbelts.
The data has been corroborated by the testimonies collected by the Civil Guard agents who provided first aid at the scene of the accident and the rescue and emergency teams that managed to get both of them off the bus, according to sources from the Comandancia de Pontevedra.
It has not been possible to clarify for the moment if the rest of the passengers,
The woman has been questioned at the hospital by agents of the Civil Guard, once she has left the ICU, where she has been admitted due to the seriousness of the injuries and trauma she suffered.
Shortly after, the driver gave a statement, who went to the Pontevedra Command to report what had happened.
Both will have to ratify their statement before the judge.
The report will be incorporated into the investigation that tries to determine the causes of the accident.
These are two technical reports prepared by a special team of the Civil Guard of Traffic, one with the analysis of the tachograph (the
black box
of the bus) and another on the remains of the wrecked bus.
This will allow the Traffic Accident Reconstruction Team (ERAT) to make a reliable simulation of the accident with all the coincident speed and weather circumstances.
Both reports will be sent to the Investigating Court number 1 of Pontevedra, in charge of the case.
The investigators are convinced that the trigger for the accident could have been the damming of water due to the heavy rainfall that was being recorded when the bus, from the Monbus company, crossed the Pendre bridge at around 9:20 p.m. on Saturday, in the municipality of Cerdedo-Cotobade.
The driver lost control of the vehicle, which fell into the riverbed from a height of almost 30 meters.
The pools of water that formed in that section, on one of the rainiest days of the year in the province of Pontevedra, came from a sloping road exit that led to the road, according to the sources consulted.
The Cerdedo-Cotobade City Council had already sent reports to the Ministry of Transport to request solutions for the poor condition of the road and the accident rate it produced.
The last statement was made in September, coinciding with the first rains, according to municipal sources.
A team from the Civil Guard participated on Wednesday in the reconstruction of the accident of the bus that crashed in the Lérez river. Gustavo de la Paz (Europa Press)
The reconstruction of the accident was carried out on Wednesday, the day after the bus was recovered from the riverbed.
ERAT experts used drones and laser systems to make a three-dimensional copy of the curve and the bridge, in addition to collecting data on road drainage in the area and simulating the braking response with a van.
Later, several experts went to the facilities of Monbus, owner of the wrecked bus, to analyze the remains of the vehicle, which remain sealed at the company's facilities, and of another active bus with similar characteristics, according to Europa Press.
In addition to the bodywork and the tachograph, the ABS and the GPS of the crashed bus will be other important documentary evidence for the investigation, whose conclusions will take several weeks to be final, according to the Civil Guard sources consulted.