FORMER Cebu City mayor Tomas Osmeña and wife Councilor Margarita “Margot” Osmeña said they were willing to give financial assistance to the victims of a vehicular accident in Lapu-Lapu City last Saturday evening.
“Why not? Nobody has contacted us but if we can help, then we will,” Councilor Osmeña told reporters.
She also said their drivers were willing to answer questions from the police.
PO2 Jennifer Decatoria of the Lapu-Lapu City Police Traffic Division said they will wait for the couple and their drivers to shed light on the accident.
“The family of the victim needs help. Perhaps they can just settle this,” Decatoria said in Cebuano.
The Osmeña couple was on their way home in separate cars from an event in Shangri-La’s Mactan Resort when the car of the former mayor, which was in the lead, hit and ran over a woman.
Fe Casalla, 35, was thrown off the motorcycle driven by her husband Wilson after a head-on collision with another motorcycle at past 10 p.m. along M.L. Quezon Highway in barangay Buaya, Lapu-Lapu City last Saturday.
In a phone interview, Osmeña said a motorcycle with a single rider overtook them at high speed and collided head on with the motorcycle of the Casallas couple, which was on the other lane.
Osmeña said Casallas hit the left corner of his car before falling in front of their vehicle.
“It was at this point that I felt a big jolt as the front and then the rear wheels lurched over a big obstacle like we ran over a sack of rice. We stopped our vehicle and dismounted and we saw three bodies sprawled in different positions,” he recalled.
Casallas was declared dead at the Mactan Doctors Hospital while her husband Wilson and the other driver, Danny Igot, were brought to the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center.
Osmeña, in a post on his official Facebook page, said it took around 45 minutes for an ambulance to reach the accident site.
“I know that at least one person has died (a poor lady backrider who bounced into my car after being knocked off her husband’s bike – she wasn’t even the driver!); I’m not sure about the other 2. If the ambulance were called sooner, maybe she would have survived,” he stated.
He said they were not able to reach 166 using a cellular phone, even if dialed with the area code 032. Osmeña said he had to call a friend to use a landline and call ERUF.
He called on ERUF to look into the accessibility of their hotline number 166 from a mobile phone.
Related Story: Woman dies in bike crash