Fatal search trip: the court overturns the verdict
court
The Salzburg regional court has overturned a judgment of negligent homicide from 2018. The convicted taxi driver is said to have helped in the search for a missing woman in Seekirchen (Flachgau) in 2017 and accidentally rolled over her with his taxi and killed her.
The taxi driver pleaded not guilty in the 2018 court case. A motor vehicle technical report by a court expert had clearly assigned the impressions of the tire tracks to the taxi. The taxi driver was sentenced to ten months’ imprisonment for negligent homicide. According to the court at the time, he drove his car into the woman lying on the grass while searching.
New opinion: process is resumed
However, a report based on new scientific methods now says that the taxi cannot have killed the woman. It is said to have been the car of the woman’s partner. The partner of the deceased is also driving in his car in the meadow to look for the woman. A date for the resumption of the process has not yet been set.
Relationship dispute and search operation
The accident on May 31, 2017 was preceded by a relationship dispute between the woman and her partner, a former doctor. The 52-year-old then left the house. Her partner followed her and found her sitting on the side of a road. When he wanted to follow her, she ran into the adjacent meadow. According to the Salzburg public prosecutor’s office, the grass there is up to half a meter high.
The mother of the disappeared apparently feared suicide. She called a cab to go to her daughter’s. On site, she asked the taxi driver to help with the search. The taxi driver then guides the meadow with the high grass and searches it in a wavy line. At the trial, the accused testified that he immediately drove back onto the road because he had to continue on for another job.
Woman run over by a car
The victim was only found when the woman’s partner got into his car a little later, also did a few laps in the meadow and came across the woman’s body. An autopsy revealed that the woman was run over by a car in the area of the chest and starved of internal bleeding.