| Home > Living In China |
German man died in accident in Beijing
print 
email 
Favorite 
Transtlate A German man died after hitting a roadside tree while driving an hijacked taxi in Chaoyang district, Beijing early Saturday morning, leaving a South Korean woman in the backseat seriously injured.
The taxi's driver surnamed Wang said he was picking up the woman at the Lidu Hotel at about 4 am, when the man, known later by police as Thomas, suddenly grabbed the door and pulled him out. The man jumped into the car and sped away.
"I didn't know what was happening," the Beijing Times quoted Wang as saying.
When the cabbie found his car again near Xiaoyun Bridge on the East Fourth Ring Road, through the GPS system installed in the cab, the car was already a wreck on the roadside slope: the hood was completely destroyed and the windshield was smashed.
Police and medical staff arrived at about 5:30 am and pulled the two people out of the cab with the help of firefighters.
Medical staff, after a preliminary examination, announced the man dead from a head trauma, and his legs were also broken, an firefighter surnamed Miao told the Global Times.
Police found the man's passport and a Siemens work certificate on him, which showed the red-haired and tattooed man, 21, was a German called Thomas.
The woman was immediately taken to the China-Japan Friendship Hospital for treatment. According to nurses at the hospital, the injuries weren't life threatening but the woman was reluctant to receive medical treatment and wouldn't say anything. Police say she was from South Korea and called herself "A Hong."
Police on site said the taxi was traveling in the wrong direction before it crossed the road barrier and crashed into a willow tree. The collision created a 15 centimeter-deep hole in the tree's trunk.
Traffic was stopped for the entire morning around the scene.
Beijing recently stepped up safety for cabs and installed a GPS terminal in each of the nearly 70,000 taxies to track the car's position. The cabs also have a fuel cutoff, in case of fire, which can be activated by the companies control center.
The German embassy and Siemens couldn't be reached, and the motive for the hijacking and the relationship between the two victims in the car have yet to be ascertained.
Custom
more
Web Dictionary
Primary＆secondary
Beijing National Day School
Beijing Concord College of Sino-Canada
Brief Introduction of BCCSC Established in the year 1993, Huijia School is a K-12 boarding priva...Beijing Huijia Private School
