The Accident

During one of our visits to Solwezi we unfortunately saw a terrible accident. It was Mid May 2010 and we were on the side of the main road trying to hitch a ride back to our village. We were stationed in front of a church and the locals had just ended their service and were in front of the church greeting each other. There were many people there enjoying the wonderful afternoon. As we were watching the approaching traffic, we saw one car coming and it pulled off the road toward us and then turned toward the church into the crowd of people. Instead of stopping it accelerated right into the crowd. We saw it hit a number of people. It was an awful sight! The car rolled over and then the people pulled the driver from the car. Since I was by the roadside I flagged down a car and told him to get the police. There were so many people all around and we were not sure what they would do so Bob said we should get out of there. We got a ride back toward town and good thing because we heard that the people got out of control. They basically started a riot. The police came and shot into the air and used tear gas but the people burned the car and even started throwing rocks at random cars passing so the road was closed and we had to go back to the house for another night.