Firemen Horrified To Discover Dead Woman Was Colleague

Story ByMichael Leidig, Sub EditorJoseph GolderAgencyCentral European News 

A court has heard how a crew of German firemen were horrified to discover a young woman killed instantly when a speeding motorist left the road was one of their own.

The crash involved an epileptic driver identified only as 32-year-old Simon L. because of German privacy laws, who had been speeding at 123 kilometres per hour when he left the road.

Picture Credit: CEN

He had lied about his illness in order to get his driving licence back which had been lost thanks to drink-driving and had not been taking his medicine regularly when the accident happened after he blacked out.

He collided head-on with 26-year-old Sabrina P., killing her instantly as she walked along the Hettstadter Gehägsweg road in Wuerzburg is the northern German state of Bavaria.

An ambulance crew and fire brigades from nearby Hettstadt and Waldbüttelbrunn were quickly on the scene, and the fire crew from Hettstadt was shocked to discover that she was one of their own firefighters.

Ambulance crews were unable to help her as she had been killed instantly after being struck by the car.

A subsequent investigation confirmed that he had been doing 123 kilometres per hour when he left the road, and killed his victim.

Incredibly he had only just got his licence back after causing a serious accident in June 2011 when he was 24 years old and have been travelling with nine people in the station wagon.

A 16-year-old who had been in the boot have been thrown through the rear window and landed on the street, where they were seriously injured. At that time he had 0.8 percent of alcohol in the blood. The court heard that many of the victims still suffer consequences from accident to this day.

But the court heard he should not have been driving at all after a doctor had told him epilepsy was a reason he was suffering from dizzy spells and blackouts and had expressly forbidden him to drive. However, he had allegedly lied in order to regain his driving licence by not revealing the truth about his illness.

An expert warned as well that because the man had suffered from the epilepsy for a decade, he would have realised that he was about to suffer an attack as he would have recognised the symptoms, and should have pulled over but he had not done so.

The young woman’s dad, Hilmar P., said that every day he walked past her bedroom and would look at her pictures on the wall, that were a tribute to how “cheerful she was”. Speaking in tears after the verdict he said: “Because of a man like this, her life has been wiped out. It’s just so terrible.”

He added that the family had a wonderful life together, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Speaking at the end of the court case, the accused man, who was jailed for three years, was in tears as he told the boyfriend of his victim and her parents: “I so wish that I could turn the clock back. I wish that I had died instead of her on that day.”

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