That night in November 2016, in which two young women aged 15 and 21, had to lose their lives on a Rosenheim bypass, started all over again for their families. The Rosenheim District Court had already needed several attempts for all criminal proceedings against the three men who met the young women in sophisticated cars that night until a flashed Golf crashed head-on into their green small car while overtaking. Two further instances followed, the appeal of one of these drivers to the Bavarian Supreme Court was successful due to a formal error. But on Friday the Traunstein Regional Court acquitted him of the accusation of negligent homicide because it was not convinced of his guilt.
The now 28-year-old man, at the time a member of the Rosenheim car poser scene, which had long been known to the police, had been behind the wheel of a BMW on the night of the accident, just like a friend before him. The two drivers are said to have left no gap between their cars to cut in when the overtaking Golf raced towards the green small car – until it finally came to a fatal crash. Initially, the public prosecutor would have let the driver of the rear BMW get away with impunity and closed the case against him. But the district court, which had sentenced the golf driver to one year and eight months on probation and the driver of the front BMW to two years imprisonment, also called for the rear BMW driver to be prosecuted. In a separate trial, he was sentenced to two years and three months in prison.
In the subsequent appeal process, the Traunstein Regional Court confirmed his sentence and increased the sentence for the driver in front by a further five months. While his appeal at the Supreme Regional Court was unsuccessful, the rear driver only got a new trial because of a formal error: While things were being negotiated that only concerned the other BMW driver, the presiding judge had given him a show of hands at the request of his defense counsel, to leave the hall. However, a formal decision would have been necessary for this, decided the Supreme Regional Court and referred the case back to Traunstein.
Another chamber then had to reopen the case there – again for nine days, again more than three dozen witnesses, again with the families of the young women who were killed as joint plaintiffs. And again with the older sister of the dead 15-year-old, who survived the accident herself, but is still suffering physically and mentally from the consequences. This time, too, the expert presented his report in which, due to the lack of traces on the road and damage to the BMWs, he did not come to any reliable conclusions about the distance between the two vehicles.
In the process four and a half years after the accident, a completely new witness was surprisingly added, who claims to have seen the whole scene with his own eyes and incriminated the BMW drivers. However, some of his statements were contradictory and what happened after the accident did not match the perceptions of several other witnesses. The chamber did not believe him any more than did the information provided by the golfer, on which the previous judgments were largely based. He testified in all of the processes that the BMW drivers had left him no gap to cut in. “The pigs didn’t let me in,” he is said to have told his sister on the phone shortly after the accident. However, the golf driver did not describe this version immediately after the accident, but for the first time a year and a half later, when he himself stood before the court for the first time after a prolonged incapacity to stand trial.
This was not enough for this chamber of the regional court to prove that the BMW driver had deliberately prevented himself from cutting in. She was sentenced to acquittal, as the defense lawyers had always demanded. The penalties for the drivers of the Golf and the other BMW remain final. Against the current ruling, the public prosecutor’s office and the co-plaintiffs can again appeal to the Supreme Regional Court.