$68,500 compo for freak bus death

Ha Xuam Lam. Photo / Supplied

A truck repair company will have to pay more than $70,000 after a wheel from a truck it had recently serviced came loose and killed a bus passenger on the Southern Motorway.

Vietnamese student Lam Xuan Hu, 24, was killed in January last year when an 80kg truck wheel smashed through the front window and hit him in the head.

Counties Manukau Automotive Diesel Repairs was yesterday charged with failing to take all practicable steps to ensure another person was not harmed.

A Department of Labour investigation found the employee who worked on the vehicle had no formal motor mechanic qualifications and had not tightened the wheel nuts properly after fixing the guard.

Mr Hu was sitting in the front seat to avoid motion sickness on a Waka Pacific bus travelling north, when the wheel came off the southbound Toll TransLink truck and bounced over the motorway median barrier and crashed through the bus window.

Jimmy McCoskrie, who was on the bus when the accident happened, said then that "everyone was shocked" and a Polynesian woman had wrapped a towel around the head of Mr Hu who was soaked with blood.

She had also asked Christians on the bus to pray for the injured man.

Mr Hu was taken to Middlemore Hospital, where he died the next day.

"This was a horrific accident in which a man lost his life while simply travelling on a bus on Auckland's motorway," said the department's Manukau service manager, Craig White.

"The saddest thing is that accident could very easily have been prevented."

The workshop must pay $60,000 in reparation for emotional harm, and $8500 to the victim's family for other costs related to airfares and funeral arrangements. It was also fined $5000.