8 more charged over bus deaths
Eight employees at a Thracian wood-processing firm were charged yesterday with murder with possible malicious premeditation in connection with the loading of the truck involved in Sunday’s deadly road accident that killed 21 schoolchildren. Dimitris Dolas, 43, the driver of the truck and trailer loaded with plywood boards that came loose in the narrow Vale of Tempe and scythed through a bus carrying 49 15- and 16-year-olds and three teachers, already faces similar charges. He is due to appear before a Larissa investigating magistrate today. The eight men charged in Larissa yesterday were the manager of the Alexandroupolis-based Akritas company, the foreman who supervised the loading of Dolas’s truck, two forklift truckdrivers and two laborers. All were arrested in Alexandroupolis and will testify tomorrow. Yesterday, the head of the Church of Greece, Archbishop Christodoulos, visited survivors at a Larissa hospital, and led a memorial service at the scene of the crash.
