A 23-year-old sol­dier is in se­ri­ous con­di­tion af­ter he was struck by a Pub­lic Trans­port Ser­vice Com­mis­sion bus in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day morn­ing.

The in­ci­dent oc­curred around 9:45 am un­der the walkover along La­dy Hailes Av­enue, Em­ba­cadere.

A po­lice re­port stat­ed that the sol­dier at­tempt­ed to cross the road and came in­to the path­way of the Deluxe Coach bus dri­ven by Bharat Ram­s­ingh.

A vis­i­bly shak­en Ram­s­ingh told Guardian Me­dia that he was trans­port­ing about 42 pas­sen­gers when the in­ci­dent oc­curred.

He said, “When the bus was com­ing, the fel­la stand up on the end of the road un­der the fly­over, just pass the edge of the fly­over. When the bus com­ing he make two for­ward (move­ments) and as the bus pass him off, he dive in front.”

Ram­s­ingh said he has been a bus dri­ver for 16 years and had nev­er been in­volved in a ma­jor ac­ci­dent. The bus dri­ver is ex­pect­ed to go on pre-re­tire­ment leave from Sep­tem­ber.

Eye­wit­ness Adana Sylvester said she saw the man stand­ing by the walkover.

She said the bus was ap­proach­ing so she crossed the road, but claimed that the man ap­peared to have wait­ed un­til the bus got clos­er be­fore step­ping off the pave­ment.

“He wait un­til the bus reach and just so the boy say ‘aye’ and jump so (show­ing the mo­tion).” Sylvester said the sol­dier got up and fell back down and then gave on­look­ers his name and his fa­ther’s num­ber.

The front wind­screen of the bus was shat­tered.

Of­fi­cers from the San Fer­nan­do Po­lice Sta­tion are in­ves­ti­gat­ing.