Girl Who Survived South Africa Bus Crash Is in Stable Condition – The New York Times

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Forty-five church pilgrims from Botswana, along with the driver, were killed when the bus plunged off an overpass into a rocky ravine in South Africa. The only survivor was a little girl.
By John Eligon and Yvonne Mooka
Reporting from Molepolole, Botswana
Lauryn Siako is the rare 8-year-old who springs out of bed to get herself ready for church, her family said. She loves the singing, the dancing, the worshiping.
So when leaders of her church announced that they were resuming the enormous annual Easter pilgrimage to church headquarters in South Africa this year, after a four-year hiatus for Covid-19, Lauryn pleaded with her mother to let her go for the first time.
Lauryn and her grandmother boarded a bus in their home village of Molepolole, Botswana, on Wednesday night with 43 fellow members of the St. Engenas Zion Christian Church, excited for the experience of a lifetime.
But by the following morning, Lauryn was the only one of the 45 passengers still alive.
The driver lost control of the bus on a sharp turn, and it careened off a high overpass on Mmamatlakala Mountain in northeastern South Africa, plunging 165 feet into a rocky ravine and bursting into flames. The driver and all of his passengers perished, except, inexplicably, the stringy girl who had just received her passport a week before the trip and had guarded it closely. She escaped with minor lacerations, South African health officials said.
“How did she come out of that bus?” Lauryn’s tearful mother, Gaolebale Siako, said on Friday, sitting in the modest home where Lauryn had lived with her grandmother in Molepolole, repeating a question she has been asking herself over and over.
AFRICA
BOTSWANA
LIMPOPO
Crash Site
Moria
Molepolole
DESTINATION
ORIGIN
Gaborone
Johannesburg
south africa
ESWATINI
LESOTHO
200 MILES
By The New York Times
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