Bolivian Alex was found in a bar this sunday while Iván, 17, and his girlfriend, Sonia, 16, were fighting for their lives in intensive care at the Virgen de la Arrixaca hospital in Murcia, after suffering a terrible accident with their electric scooter, allegedly at the hands of this Bolivian citizen driving a Peugeot Partner van.
This is what Alex acknowledged in the City of Justice where, according to judicial sources, this driver affirmed that panic -supposedly- had pushed him to leave two minors lying there, bleeding to death on the asphalt of Avenida de la Ñora, in the middle of the street early this Sunday: “I didn’t stop because I was scared, not because I was drunk.“.
Such a feeling of fear led him to engage in shameful and illegal behavior, but Álex assured that remorse pushed him the next day to surrender to the local police of Murcia when they had been following him for almost twelve hours. A transcendental decision that he made in no less than a bar: “I was restless all night, I couldn’t sleepand the next morning I was talking to a friend who was drinking a beer. So my friend told me to go to the police station and we left.”
Álex GB, 48, appeared on Sunday at noon at the La Alberca barracks, accompanied by a lawyer, declare that he surrendered voluntarily and the Murcia Court of Instruction number 4 released him with charges. Since this Monday, he can breathe fresh air outside the cells again, with the only obligation to appear periodically and the prohibition to leave the country, since he is being investigated for two crimes of reckless injury and refusal of assistance.
In the foreground, the two miners’ electric scooter, completely destroyed. In the background, paramedics resuscitate Iván and Sonia on the asphalt.
“The families of the two victims are outraged by this decision to release them,” said Verónica Ene, lawyer for the couple still in intensive care: Iván, 17, and Sonia, 16, both students at the Miguel de Cervantes Institute.The teaching that we go out consists in the fact that a person can crush, hit has escape and exit from a free court“, as the lawyer reflects.”
Verónica Ene says she will appeal the release order, to request that Áléx be placed in provisional prison: “One of the arguments we are going to present is that there is a risk of leakage because he did not submit his employment contract to the court, to justify his roots in Spain, and that at the time of the attack on the two minors, he had already demonstrated his intention to escape the action of Justice because he fled the region.
Álex admitted to the magistrate that on the night of the traffic accident he was driving a white Peugeot Partner, which had been “left” with him to do “some shopping” and that he was returning to the house he shares with a friend. In his testimony in court, where he refused to answer questions from the lawyer for the two victims, this Bolivian stressed that when he entered Avenida de la Ñora “I was a little tired” -driving a van that belonged to him-.
Security cameras of a house recorded him on Sunday at 1:18 a.m., driving along the aforementioned avenue. At that time, Iván, 17, was transporting his girlfriend Sonia, 16, on his electric scooter. to move it from Rincón de Beniscornia where they had dinner together, at the girl’s parents’ house in La Albatalía.
The investigated person’s van recorded by a security camera minutes before the alleged attack on Avenida de la Ñora.
The distance between the two districts of Murcia is less than 4 kilometres and the teenage couple did not comply with the Municipal Ordinance on Mobility of Murcia, since it does not allow more than one occupant per personal mobility vehicle (VMP). Both were travelling on board a Cecoted Bongo Series 7 scooter, with reflective handlebars and front and rear lights, but that didn’t stop the 112 received a call 1:22 p.m. Sunday: “In Corner of BeniscorniaIt was reported that a van hit a scooter and fled the scene“.
But Alex offered a diametrically opposed version on Monday – according to judicial sources. Specifically, he blames the accident on the minors and rejects the complaint filed by Erik, Iván’s father, and Miguel, Sonia’s father, who claim that the van that the Bolivian was driving collided from behind with the scooter that ran over the teenagers and dragged them bodies along the asphalt for fifteen meters. “I was going in my normal way, Suddenly I felt a knock on the front window on the left side. and before the impact, I didn’t hear anything.”
This statement by this agricultural worker means that it was the miners who collided with his van as they entered Avenida de la Ñora. Proof of this is that Álex claims that he did not discover that he had taken the bodies of Iván and Sonia: “This place is very dark, there are a lot of curvesIt’s a bit dangerous and I hadn’t heard anything before.” So he told the magistrate that he continued to drive until he began to think about the possibility that he had collided with something or someone:
“I didn’t know what to think and I kept driving. Later, about ten minutes later, I started to get curious about what had happened. I turned around. [a la Avenida de la Ñora] and I saw that there were people on the road, with a person who was on the ground and people gathered. I was going fast, I got scared and I left. I saw everything very quickly. I was afraid people would retaliate.“Nothing could be further from the truth, as the neighbours only came out of their homes when they heard a roar and took care to do what Alex had failed to do: call an ambulance and help the miners.
The Peugeot Partner van driven by Bolivian Álex is being analysed by the local police in Murcia.
The Public Prosecutor did not request the suspect’s imprisonment after asking him a few questions in turn to interrogate him. The prosecutor insists on two problems with this immigrant who earns his living as a day laborer for a Temporary Employment Agency (ETT). The first: if he did not hear the impact against an electric scooter, occupied by two teenagers. And the second: why he fled the scene of the road accident. This is how he answered: “I did not see anything before the impact. I did not stop because I was afraid. Afterwards I was curious to know what had hit me and then I left.” [a la Avenida de la Ñora]”.
Álex used “fear” to the point of exhaustion to justify his decision to flee the scene of an accident in which two miners were struggling for life and death. He was even able to claim, when questioned by his lawyer, that he fled because he was afraid that the neighbors who were helping the couple would rob him: “He had 2.60 euros in cash. I didn’t stop because I was afraid they would rob me. […]”.
The lawyer for the private prosecution, Verónica Ene, is already preparing her appeal to request the driver’s imprisonment, given the content of the explanations that Álex provided to the Murcia Court of Instruction number 4: “I think it is necessary to reform the road legislation because this judicial decision to release him is disappointing for society, because behavior such as failing to help two victims is rewarded of an accident”.
