FUKUOKA (TR) – An elderly male taxi driver slammed into the reception area of a hospital in Fukuoka City, killing two people and injuring several others, three of them are unconscious in serious condition, police said on Saturday.
Police arrested Tatsuo Matsuoka, 64, on suspicion of negligent driving resulting in injury after he drove through the windows of Harasanshin Hospital into its reception area before slamming into an interior wall at around 5 p.m. in Hakata Ward, NHK reports (Dec. 3).
Police are rushing to confirm hospital reports of several people with injuries.
Matsuoka was quoted by police as saying the car “wouldn’t stop even after hitting the brakes, so I changed gears and tried to put on the engine brakes, I wanted to slow down.”
A witness at the scene said they “saw the entire taxi smash through the windows and into the hospital. There was a man getting CPR before being carried away.”
‘I saw a woman’s head under the car’
A witness told TBS News the car “was going crazy fast. It was horrible, I saw a woman’s head under the car.”
TBS News quoted another witness as saying they saw a “little girl calling out ‘dad, dad’ and ‘my dad is dead.’ [The driver] was just sitting there in silence, like he was dazed.”
Another witness said they “headed to the hospital after hearing a loud sound, and that’s when I saw that a car had broken through the windows and crashed into the hospital building itself.”
“There were overturned sofas and boots that came off people strewn around the car,” the witness said. “Numerous people were being carried into the hospital.”
