“For me this man was a kamikaze who was going to commit suicide but he killed another person.” This is how forceful one of the witnesses who testified this Wednesday in the first session of the trial against a driver who caused an accident has been. … in which a 31-year-old young man died on July 27, 2018 in the municipality of Nalda. This taxi driver with almost two decades of experience and rally co-driver recalled with details that brought the deceased’s family to tears an accident that marked him. “They crashed at my door, I saw a cloud of white smoke… I even remember the driver’s body coming straight through the moon above the steering wheel,” he testified.
Those words have culminated a testimony that has been almost like a journey to death from the Villanueva intersection to kilometer point 312.6 of the N-111. «I went out onto the road and there were six or seven cars, the last one, a red Audi 100. On the Torrecilla straight I started to overtake another car. I saw that he saw me in the rearview mirror and, when I reached him, he tried to swerve me off the road. “I had to brake hard and I got into the gap left by his car,” he recalled. After the scare, shortly after, the witness saw the Audi stopped next to the Peñaclara door “and the driver holding his head with his hands, as if head-butting.”
He continued on his way although he recalled that he tried to contact the Civil Guard to make them aware of the situation, but he was unable to do so. A few kilometers later, when he was already facing the Iregua valley, he saw the same vehicle coming “giving everything it gave, overtaking and getting behind.” He also saw, in the other lane, a Ford Focus that “was driving normally, in its lane, at an appropriate speed” when the Audi “started to overtake” causing the collision. «I am convinced that he did it on purpose. What’s more, shortly after they told me that he had said days before that he wanted to commit suicide. And the intention was to cause an accident », he pointed out. «He would have had time to have avoided the accident and he didn’t want to do it. “I was going for him,” he added.
The father and ex-partner of the accused, a young man from Soria who was 31 years old at the time of the events, also participated in this initial session of the case. The first, owner of the Audi, has assured that he did not allow his son to take that car. “I asked him to give me the key and he gave it to me, but he would make another copy,” he declared, recalling an occasion in which he even reported him for having stolen his car “with three shotguns inside.” He explained that his son, before the accident, was “conflictive”, a perception that was supported by his ex-partner, with whom he had a relationship of just a month and a half shortly before the accident that ended with a complaint for sexist violence. .
She assured that the accused “was a good person when he was not drunk or drugged”, but that “he consumed speed, cocaine, alcohol…”. In one of those cases of alcohol abuse, he threatened her, so the ex-partner reported him and requested a protection order. “At the time of the accident he was wearing a telematic bracelet,” he noted and recalled that, after leaving the relationship, the defendant told him that “he was going to take his father’s car and commit suicide.”
To end the session, two Civil Guard Traffic agents recalled the accident and agreed to point out its cause. “The Audio invaded the opposite lane in a surprising manner and did not give the Focus driver time to react,” the first testified. “It was irresponsible on the part of that driver,” confirmed the second.
The accused, the last
Before the first witnesses, the parties have explained their functions to the jury and have begun to draw the main lines of accusation and defense in an atypical trial, since the accused will be the last to testify, when it is usual for him to be the first. His lawyer has preferred to change the order, although he has already stated that the accused “cannot remember anything” and that he is “exposed to what others say.”
The prosecution and private prosecution have agreed that the behavior of the young man who sits in the dock “was deliberate”, since behind it there was an intention to take his own life. «A suicidal tendency with a terrible method. “Anyone could have been the victim,” he added.
“It is not an accident – the lawyer for the victim’s family has pointed out – but rather he killed on a straight line with visibility, without obstacles and without any maneuver option.” And she recalled that the deceased, who belongs to a family of churros, was returning from Logroño to Soria “after buying bread and other things.” “He fulfilled his obligations to the family,” he said.
In the case of DS’s defense, his lawyer has tried, first of all, to annul the breathalyzer test taken at the scene of the accident, understanding that the chain of custody was breached, that the results could have been altered due to the resuscitation maneuvers and also doubted the results of this, lowering it from 0.72 milligrams per exhaled air to 0.52. His attempt was dismissed by the court.
Subsequently, he argued that the accusations have forgotten the victim’s participation in the accident and that he “I’m sorry because he died, but it must be said, he tested positive for marijuana.” «There was another driver [la víctima] that he came in a caravan, that he was driving similar, that he hit a car with gusts… In the worst case scenario, there could have been a concurrence of attitudes,” he noted. Furthermore, he recalled that his defender, since the brutal collision, has suffered an intellectual disability of 15% and a physical disability of 27%.
From “simple accident” to intentional homicide
The first of the sessions of the trial for the traffic accident that ended the life of a 31-year-old young man in Nalda last 2018 served for the prosecution, private prosecution and defense to present their points of view substantiated in the requests for sentences to the that the accused faces. The Public Ministry requests 13 years in prison and nine years of deprivation of a driving license, while the prosecution representing the family of the deceased requests 15 years in prison. For its part, the defense of the accused considers the prosecutor’s writing “nonsense” and considers that “there is no crime” but rather that it is a “pure and simple” accident, which is why it requests acquittal or, failing that, a maximum penalty of one year in prison and another year of driving deprivation.
