Three people are fighting for their lives after a rickshaw collided with a London bus in the heart of the West End during the early hours of the Bank Holiday Monday.
Victims Rushed to Major Trauma Centres
The crash happened on Charing Cross Road, WC2, shortly after midnight. The rickshaw rider and two passengers sustained critical injuries and were treated at the roadside for some time by police officers and paramedics before being rushed to major trauma centres in central London.
Police confirmed that officers remain with the injured parties at hospital.
Full Collision Investigation
Specialist officers from the Metropolitan Police Alperton Traffic Garage and the Forensic Collision Investigation Unit are leading enquiries. A full collision reconstruction is underway at the scene.
The road remains closed, with diversions affecting night bus routes N29, N20, N5, N279 and 24 towards Trafalgar Square. The closure is expected to continue for several hours.
Tomasz Masierak, 31, A bystander from Poland, who was walking nearby shortly after 1am, described the harrowing scene.
“I was walking around one o’clock in the morning and saw people lying on the floor. The ambulance crews were working on them, and it looked like a really serious incident — there was blood and everything. I believe two of the people were English, and the driver, I think, might have been from India or Bangladesh, but I’m not sure.
It was horrible to see. The paramedics kept working on them for a long time. It was really not good, and very sad.”
Awaiting Official Updates
The Metropolitan Police and London Ambulance Service have been approached for an official statement but have not yet released further details on the victims’ conditions.
A Met Police source at the Scene said:
“Our specialist collision investigators are working to establish the full circumstances of this very serious incident. We continue to appeal to anyone who may have witnessed the collision, or has dashcam or CCTV footage, to come forward.”
A London Ambulance Service spokesperson said:
“We were called at 1.07am today (25 August) to reports of a road traffic collision at the junction of Charing Cross Road and Phoenix Street.
“We sent resources to the scene, including ambulance crews, an advanced paramedic, a paramedic in a fast response car and an incident response officer. We also dispatched a trauma team in a car from London’s Air Ambulance.
“We treated three people. We took one patient to a major trauma centre and two patients to local hospitals.”
