The Court of First Instance and Instruction number one of Utrera (Seville), acting as guard, has ordered this Tuesday, at the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, the entry into provisional prison, communicated and without bail of the driver of the truck arrested after fatally running over this early morning six people, including two Civil Guard agents, in a control carried out by the Armed Institute on the AP-4, in the municipality of Los Palacios and Villafranca, as reported by the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA ).
Initially, he is accused of six alleged crimes of reckless homicide and three crimes of serious injury due to recklessness. During his court appearance, the detainee gave a statement, since the case itself will be handled by the Court of First Instance and Instruction number four of Utrera, which was on duty when the events occurred.
According to investigation sources, this truck driver, who has returned a negative result in alcohol and drug tests, is 59 years old, is of Spanish nationality and has no criminal record. He was at the controls of the articulated truck that was the protagonist of the events, which had left La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) loaded with fruit and vegetable products, bound for Guarromán (Jaén).
However, at kilometer point 24 of the AP-4, in the municipality of Los Palacios, this articulated truck hit a Civil Guard checkpoint installed to intercept possible transfers of narcotic substances, with the result already described.
The deceased agents are First Corporal Eneko of the GAR, 37 years old, who had his residence in Vitoria (Álava) although he was a native of Baracaldo (Vizcaya); and the civil guard Juan Jesús, 34 years old, resident of El Ejido, in the province of Almería.
The four deceased civilians are a 47-year-old resident of Dos Hermanas (Seville), a 50-year-old resident of Barbate (Cádiz), a 53-year-old citizen of Ceuta and a 20-year-old young man initially of foreign nationality who resided in Vizcaya. .
There are also five injured, all members of the Civil Guard. Two of them have suffered minor injuries and have gone to health centers on their own, while three others are more serious and are admitted to hospital centers.
One of them, the most serious, would suffer a bilateral pneumothorax and other trauma and would be admitted to the Virgen del Rocío hospital; while another would be affected with a fracture in a leg and a last injured person would suffer a fracture of the femur and also injuries to the pancreas and liver. These last two injured people would be being treated at the Valme hospital.
While Commander Rafael Jiménez Onetti explained to the media at the scene of the accident that the possibility of “drowsiness or lack of attention” of the truck driver as possible causes of the accident would be investigated, the subdelegate of the central government in Seville, Francisco Toscano Rodero has reiterated that it is a “road accident due to accidental causes”, alluding to “a distraction, a flash or a mistake” by the truck driver.
