Chennai: Three students of an engineering college died and another seriously injured when the two wheelers on which they were travelling were hit from behind by a mini truck loaded with tender coconuts on East Coast Road on early Sunday morning near Kovalam.
The latest accident means that in the last one week as many as eight people have been killed on ECR.
The victims were all students of Sathyabhama University doing their third year engineering. The deceased were identified as S. Sakthivel (20) from Kovilambakkam, K Ravikumar (21) of Cheyyar and M Sasikumar (21) of Palaymakottai. M.Prakash (21) who was injured is from Tindivanam.
Police said the students left in two wheelers on Saturday evening and had gone to Mahabalipuram. They were travelling from Mahabalipuram to Kovalam at around 4 am and turning right towards a village when the mini truck hit the vehicles from behind.
Sakthivel and Ravikumar were on a TVS Scooty while the others were on a Bajaj Pulsar. The driver of the mini truck escaped from the scene immediately after the incident.
Motorists alerted 108 ambulance and paramedical staff who arrived in the ambulance declared three students dead and took the survivor to a nearby private hospital in the early hours. The accident also caused a traffic snarl on ECR for more than an hour on Sunday morning.
