A 20-year-old woman from Deurne has received the maximum community service of 240 hours to kill a 64-year-old man from her hometown. The court in Den Bosch ruled on Friday. As a starting driver, the woman rode the man by bike four times too much alcohol on Sunday morning. He died later in the day in the hospital.
The 64-year-old man from Deurne was suddenly hit right from behind that Sunday morning in June 2023 by the then 18-year-old woman on the Griendtsveenseweg in the outskirts of Deurne. According to the court, the woman should have seen the victim. Her sight was not hampered by anything, the road is straight and well -arranged at the scene of the accident and it was a clear day.
On the contrary, she should have been particularly attentive because there is a bicycle lane on both sides of the roadway and several cyclists were driving. Yet she did not see the 64-year-old cyclist. The man rode for a cyclist who had just caught up with the woman. Moreover, research showed that the woman had drunk almost four times too much alcohol for a starting driver. That alone was limited to her ability to control the car. The court therefore finds that there was ‘considerably careless and inattentive driving’.
The young woman drove her father’s car and was on her way to work. “I didn’t see him at all,” she said during the session. Even though it was not the intention to drive the man, the court blames her. “That does not alter the fact that her actions have changed lives and permanently,” the court writes in the verdict.
The woman was completely confused of the blow. “I thought a tree had fallen on my car,” she said. “But when I got out, I saw a man lying on the floor. I hadn’t seen him at all.” When the trauma heli landed, the woman understood that it was wrong. In the evening the message came that the 64-year-old man had died in the hospital in Nijmegen.
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The woman turned out to have a lot of alcohol in her blood from the drink she had drunk at night: 330 UGL, where a starting driver may only have 88 ugl in the blood. The woman told the judges that she had not thought of that at all.
Normally there is a prison sentence on such facts, but the court was lenient. She took into account the young age of the woman and the court also finds that it took too long before the case was brought to court. Normally that has to be done within two years, but that did not work in this case.
The court was therefore sufficient with the maximum community service of 240 hours. The woman may also continue to drive from the court, because she cannot go to work in the hospitality industry in the outskirts and without a car. However, she has been conditionally lost her driver’s license for two years, which means that she cannot afford any mistakes.
