Cádiz in mourning after runaway bus kills three and injures three others

The bus ‘ran over several people who were on the pavement’, Cádiz firefighters said on X (formerly Twitter), adding that no one on the bus was injured.

Videos posted on social media showed firefighters dragging a palm tree off the top of the bus which came to a stop outside of a department store.

The front windows of the bus were completely shattered.

The bus was reportedly descending from a steep bridge in Cádiz, when it mounted the pavement and crashed into a bus stop and taxi rank area at the doors of the El Corte Inglés department store. The incident happened at about 3.45pm.

Three people were injured in and taken to hospital ‘one of whom has serious injuries’, the Andalusian government said in a statement.

According to reports, a 17-year-old young man, a 19-year-old young woman and a 60-year-old woman, were the fatal victims of the accident.

‘It appears to have been a brake failure, because the first images showed the bus arriving at high speed, unable to brake’ and ‘the movement the bus made is consistent with this idea’, Cádiz official José Pacheco told reporters.

The driver of the bus tested negative for alcohol, the city council said in a statement. The head of the regional government of Andalusia, Juan Manuel Moreno, said he was ‘overwhelmed’ by the news of the ‘unfortunate accident’ in Cádiz.Cádiz City Council decreed three days of mourning after the tragic accident.