Crash wipes out family after birthday celebration

A housewife killed in a car crash with her husband and two young children had been returning from a weekend break to celebrate her 27th birthday. Lalitha Menezes, her husband Danny and their two daughters - five month-old Mikayla and two year-old Nirvana - were killed instantly in the collision on Friday evening.

They were returning from a trip to Kalba on the East Coast when their Nissan Sunny was involved in a collision with another car on the Masafi-Dibba road. Police say they all died instantly from severe head injuries.

The driver of the second car, Sulaiman Mohammed Sulaiman Al Hosani, and his passenger, Abdullah Saeed Hilal, both 20-year-old nationals, were taken to Dibba Al Fujairah Hospital with head injuries.

Danny, 31, was originally from Bombay but had grown up in the UK. He had worked as operations superintendent at Petrochem Middle East's terminal in Jebel Ali Free Zone for the past 18 months.

Terminal manager S. Mukherjee said he was stunned by the tragedy. "Danny was in charge of safety at the terminal and was very safety conscious which makes it very difficult to understand how something like this could have happened," he said.