“Killing with a car is very cheap.” This is a phrase repeated by many relatives of traffic victims. Most fatal accidents, even if recklessness is proven, end with sentences of around 4 years in prison. Drivers are judged for crimes against road safety as no intentionality is appreciated in deaths on the asphalt. But there are exceptions and sometimes justice “sees reason,” as relatives of those who have lost loved ones on the road would say, and a fatal traffic accident comes to be considered a homicide.
Read more The «Solidarity Aces» of Banco Sabadell are dedicated this year to rare diseases
The latest example? The trial for the death of Juan López, a 35-year-old doctor and father of two young children, whose life was cut short by two drivers in the M-30 tunnels, due to a stupid road rage incident.
The defenses will strive to make the tragedy pass as an accident; the prosecutor speaks of homicide
It happened on July 25, 2021. Juan was not scheduled to work that day, but knowing that there was a shortage of hands at the Jiménez Díaz Foundation – it was the fifth wave of the coronavirus – he decided to go to his workplace to help his overwhelmed colleagues. He was an emergency internist. He never reached his hospital. On his way, he encountered those drivers, Rafael M.F. and Francisco M.S., who got into a road rage incident after one of them flashed their lights at the other, and began a reckless race through those tunnels. Reaching speeds – the prosecutor claims, although the defense says this has not been proven – of up to 170 kilometers per hour in a section with a seventy-kilometer limit.
Those two vehicles collided with each other and violently impacted Juan’s car. This doctor died shortly after in the hospital, in the arms of his wife, Laura, who is also a doctor. This was recounted last week by this woman, who was pregnant with their second child when Juan died. The eldest still asks me “where is daddy,” Laura said a few meters from the bench where the two accused were sitting.
Read more Humanoid robots cut almost two hours off last year’s time in the Beijing half marathon
The strategy of the lawyers for these two drivers is the most common in this type of trial: to make that death pass as an unfortunate traffic accident. They question, among other things and to justify their position, whether those vehicles reached the 170 kilometers per hour recorded in the police report. It was a road rage incident, yes, but for these lawyers, there was no intent to kill in that reckless driving. This is contrary to what the prosecutor maintains, for whom the conduct of the two accused is a clear disregard for the lives of other users on that road. Thus, he classifies the facts as a crime of homicide – their cars were the weapon – and requests a sentence of 15 years in prison for each of these drivers.
Neither Rafael M.F. nor Francisco M.S. have, for the moment, set foot in prison for Juan’s death. Both remain free and appeared on their own accord last week at the start of this trial. Everything was going according to the script for these cases until Wednesday, when the defendants were scheduled to testify, one of them did not appear in the courtroom. The court ordered them to be sought at his home in Loeches. But there was no trace, nor in the vicinity of his home, which was searched by agents.
And now what? A search and arrest warrant has been issued against that driver, who now seems closer than ever to paying a hefty judicial bill for his recklessness. The court has given a deadline, until next week, to see if he is arrested or returns to the courtroom voluntarily. If he does not do so soon, the popular jury that was supposed to deliver a verdict in this case will have to be dissolved, and the trial will have to start all over again. An added blow for Laura, her two children, and her family, who only hope for justice to be served.
Read more Controversial naturopath Txumari Alfaro, presenter of ‘La botica de la abuela’, dies
