A 27-year-old man from Vinkel has to go to jail for six months because he killed a woman in Rosmalen in 2021. The court in Den Bosch has determined this on Wednesday. He collided with his car on the victim’s car, a 56-year-old woman from Berghem.
The man had smoked joints and drove much too fast, the judge ruled. In addition, the man did not brake to try to prevent the fatal accident on Vliertwijksestraat in Rosmalen.
The judge also ruled that the man had lost his driver’s license for three years because he was ‘very worried’ about the man’s driving behaviour. He must pay the surviving relatives compensation of almost 45,000 euros. He also awaits another six months in prison when he commits the error again.
‘No time to brake’
The accident happened on November 4, 2021, in the early evening. The verdict was postponed in July last year because the court in Den Bosch found that the investigation so far was sometimes sloppy and incomplete in a number of places. New research has established that the man from Vinkel had not yet braked 0.2 seconds before the collision. He says himself that he didn’t have time for that.
He also turned out to have too high a concentration of THC (the active substance in hashish and weed) in his blood. In addition, he drove 98 kilometers per hour where he was allowed 80.
The man from Vinkel himself said that he was innocent because he was driving on a priority road. He also stated that he had smoked one or two joints the night before the accident, but he said it had no effect on his driving ability. New research showed that the amount of THC found cannot be from the night before. An officer had also smelled a light hemp odor on him.
Victim’s daughter has PTSD
The public prosecutor had demanded eight months in prison and a four-month suspended prison sentence. He would also have to pay 15,000 euros in compensation to the woman’s daughter. She contracted post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after seeing her mother in the morgue.
During an earlier session, she said, among other things: “I hope you can serve thirty years, because my mother still owed that.”