Despite the years of distance, the witness can tell how deep the horror was with him. Almost five years ago, the now 68-year-old man observed an accident in Dieburg, of which he reported on Tuesday in the district court of Darmstadt. He drove his car towards a roundabout on an August day. Then he saw a girl on a bicycle at the entrance to a supermarket branching off from the roundabout, and a car at the roundabout. After that, he had to watch as the vehicle hit the little cyclist from behind. He reports: "The girl disappeared before my eyes."
Jan Schiefenhövel
Editor in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.
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It is clear from the witness's words that he could not immediately comprehend what he had seen because he was frightened. He stopped his car, drove on when other drivers complained behind him, and then stopped again in the supermarket parking lot. "I was underwater." This is how the witness describes how he felt with his fright.
Driving inattentively
The girl on the bike was killed in the accident. Two and a half hours after the collision, the eight-year-old was diagnosed in the hospital. The accident was first dealt with by the Dieburg District Court. In 2020, a criminal judge imposed a prison sentence of ten months on probation and a driving ban of three months against the accident driver because, according to the judge, he had driven inattentively and could have braked in time if he had driven more carefully. Both the defendant and the public prosecutor's office did not want to accept the verdict and appealed, so the case will be heard again at the Darmstadt Regional Court.
At the beginning of the trial day, the presiding judge Karsten Markert describes what the district court had found. Accordingly, the then 77-year-old driver overlooked the girl on the bicycle, bumped into the rear wheel with his vehicle, the child got under the car and was dragged along. The car rolled over a traffic island and the oncoming lane and came to a stop against a wall.
In the courtroom on Tuesday, the 42-year-old mother, who was on her way to the supermarket at the roundabout with the eight-year-old and a younger daughter, will be questioned. The chairman asks cautiously and patiently, but the exact course of events cannot be reconstructed with this statement. According to the mother, two years of therapy did not help her get over the death of her child.
Although the defendant admits to the collision with the child, he claims: "I am completely innocent." The girl had driven in the roundabout against the direction of travel and came from the left, while he had looked to the right to the exit from the roundabout. So the child "drove into my vehicle," says the man. The girl had not been dragged along. After the collision, he saw everything like in a movie and stopped on the gas in shock until the car came to a stop. Only a little later, for the only time that morning, does he say a short word of regret over the child's death. The accident driver does not apologize to the relatives. The trial continues.