A driver drowned after his car fell off a drawbridge into the Danė River in central Klaipėda. The victim was a foreign national, the police say.
The accident occurred at 0:45 on Thursday. The driver, 30, was reportedly alone when his VW Taigo drove into the river on Pilies Street. According to Klaipėda County Police, he was a foreign national.
The authorities later specified that he was a US serviceman, without giving more details.
“The military police have taken over the investigation,” Asta Kazukauskienė, spokeswoman for the Klaipėda County Police, told BNS.
According to the sources, the 30-year-old US serviceman was in civilian clothes. He had come from Latvia in a rented car and stayed in a hotel in Klaipėda.
At the time of the accident, the drawbridge was up and the barrier was down.
The driver’s body has been recovered by divers.
“When they arrived, the car was not visible in the water, the divers dived in and saw that the car had rolled over on its roof, there was a body of a man on the driver’s side. The divers flipped the car in the water, pulled out the man and marked the location of the sunken car,” Edita Zdanevičienė, a spokeswoman for the Fire and Rescue Department, told BNS.
“The male victim was pulled out and handed over to the police. The car was left in place due to darkness, and today [Thursday] extraction work will be carried out,” Igoris Voveris, chief specialist at the Situation Coordination Subdivision of the Fire and Rescue Department, told BNS on Thursday morning.
A pre-trial investigation has been opened into the fatal accident.
Later on Thursday, a video has been shared on social media, allegedly showing the moment when the car drove off the bridge. The video seems to have been filmed from an adjacent building and shows the car stopping in front of a barrier before dropping into the river.
Newsletter
Every Friday morning.
