FOUR PEOPLE were killed and three others injured in a car crash on the EN125 in Burgau, Vila do Bispo, on Friday night (August 31).
Vera Lúcia Lucas Leal, aged 24, from Carouche, Santarém, was pronounced dead when emergency services arrived at the scene and Ukrainian-born Vasyl Markiv also died despite several attempts to revive him.
Manuel Teixeira Marques, who had lived in the area for many years, was rushed to hospital but died on the operating table and 19-year-old Ana Rita Ribeiro also died in hospital.
Joaquim Manuel Aguiar Mota, aged 48, sustained minor cuts and bruises to his face and was examined for broken bones before being released. Luís Filipe Silva, aged 24, and António José Custódio, aged 39, were kept in the orthopaedics department of Barlavento hospital to receive treatment for broken bones.
Ana Ribeiro and Luís Silva had been on holiday in the Algarve together and the other five worked at a nearby construction site. It is believed that the car with five people was heading from Lagos to Vila do Bispo and the couple was allegedly travelling in the opposite direction. It appears that the two small cars hit each other head-on.
José Custódio and Vera Leal, the other woman who died, were also a couple and the car with the five occupants including them, which was involved in the collision, belonged to Custódio.
Wreckage
A nearby resident heard the crash and ran outside to find the wreckage. He called police and emergency services to the scene. According to this resident, the bombeiros took 20 minutes to arrive and the emergency services did not arrive until around midnight, nearly four hours after the crash took place.
An explanation as to why it took them so long to arrive at the scene has not been given but a spokesperson for the Transport Police said: “We are beginning a safe driving campaign this month to highlight certain dangers.”
The accident has been deemed as one of the worst accidents to occur on Algarve’s roads this summer.
So far this year, 51 people have died on roads in the region, which is the same number registered throughout the whole of 2006. Since August 26, seven people have died in the region: one in Messines, two in Odeleite and four in Burgau.
Since the beginning of the year, 480 people have died on Portuguese roads, 78 of which died in August alone. So far this year, 1,626 people sustained serious injuries and 19,058 sustained minor injuries following car collisions in Portugal.
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