Five members of a family, including three women and a 14-year-old boy, were killed when an ambulance hit their car in the wee hours of Monday.

The ambulance was headed from the city towards Devanahalli. It was not carrying any patient. Police said the driver lost control of the vehicles and hit a divider at the Venkatala bus stop near Kogilu Cross in Yelahanka. The ambulance cut across the divider and went into the opposite lane before overturning. The car was heading from the airport to the city when it hit the overturned ambulance.

The deceased are Deepankar Dey, 42, an analyst with a private multi-media company, his wife Swagatha Chowdhary, 42, a teacher and academic co-ordinator at a private school in Hebbal, their son Dhruv Dey, 14, a high school student in the same school, Sujaya Manoj, 45, a software engineer and sister of Swagatha, and their mother Jayathi, 65.

The three women are from Chittaranjan while Deepankar is from Durgapur in West Bengal. The family, except Sujaya Manoj, were residents of RT Nagar.

According to the police, Sujaya had come from Chennai a week ago to look up Jayathi, who was diagnosed with liver cirrhosis and was staying with Swagatha.

Sujaya’s husband Manoj is a software engineer with a company in Chennai. Sujaya was scheduled to fly to Chennai from Bengaluru before midnight on Sunday. Due to the stormy weather on Sunday night, her flight got delayed and was rescheduled for departure around 6.25 a.m. on Monday.

The family had gone to drop her at the airport. Owing to the rescheduling of her flight, they were returning home, a senior police officer said.

Deepankar was driving their hatchback from the airport towards RT Nagar. When the car reached Venkatala bus stop, they hit an oncoming 108 ambulance that had cut across the divider, come to the opposite lane and overturned.

The adults died instantly due to fatal injuries while Dhruv was rushed to a hospital, but died on the way, the police said.

Due to the impact, the car was mangled. The police had a tough time recovering the bodies.

The bodies were shifted to MS Ramaiah Hospital for post-mortem before being handed over to family members.

The ambulance driver, Channabasappa, sustained injuries. He has been admitted to Victoria Hospital. The police are waiting for him to recover before taking him into custody.

The Yelahanka traffic police have registered a case, and have booked Channabasappa for death due to negligence, rash and negligent driving.