The dramatic bus accident last Sunday on the E19 motorway in Schoten, in the province of Antwerp, brutally separated a young couple who had just become engaged.
Andrés Felipe Rodriguez, 28, and his partner Ana Maria Torres, 26, had been traveling to Europe for a few days. After having stayed in Paris, these young Colombians were on their way to Amsterdam. On Sunday, they sat next to each other on the BlaBlaCar bus that linked the French capital to the Dutch city.
For an as yet undetermined reason, this coach deviated from its trajectory, hit a safety barrier before overturning near Schoten on the E19 motorway towards the Netherlands. The toll of the accident is heavy: two passengers on the tourist bus lost their lives and eighteen others were injured, five of them seriously. A total of 30 passengers between the ages of 16 and 39 were on the bus.
Just after a romantic stay in Paris
As Het Nieuwsblad explains, Andrés did not survive. A few days earlier, he proposed to his girlfriend on the banks of the Seine, with the Eiffel Tower in the background. The young woman replied “yes”. But this accident put a tragic end to their love story.
“I lost an arm but above all I lost my future husband”, Ana testified to our colleagues on her hospital bed.
Picture on Instagram
The driver under arrest warrant
The 35-year-old French driver of the bus was placed under an arrest warrant by the investigating judge. The investigation into the exact cause of the accident is still ongoing. The Antwerp public prosecutor’s office had demanded the arrest of the man after a positive saliva test. The man was already known in France for drug-related offences.
Furthermore, following this accident, the Minister of Justice, Vincent Van Quickenborne, declared that 100,000 saliva tests will be made available to the police this year as part of the fight against driving under the influence drugs, twice as many as in 2021.