Alexander Leibman, accused of negligently causing death of 4 passengers in an accident near Ben Gurion Airport in December 2019 claims he did not cause the accident • The evidence hearing will be held in August

In Petah Tikva's Traffic Court, the trial of Alexander Leibman opened Tuesday morning, a driver accused of negligently causing the death of four passengers in the horrific accident in December 2019 when the bus he was driving crashed into the station.

Leibman, 44, who is charged with causing death by negligence of Veronica Phillip, Hailey Weinberg, Joseph Kahalani and the late Bertha Schwartz and easily driving a head or negligence causing a car accident in which a man was beaten, said through his attorney that he was not guilty of the accident. The defendant disobeyed the indictment. The defendant's claim that he passed out and therefore the bus veered off. The deviation did not happen because of his default but because he passed out. "

The plaintiff replied: "There is no support for the claim that he passed out. In our opinion, he fell asleep." The proof hearing will be held in August. The families of the dead did not come up for discussion.

According to the indictment, on December 22, 2019 at 1:30 pm, the defendant was driving a bus on line 947 from Haifa to Jerusalem, a trip that was supposed to take about three hours, but was lengthened and delayed. The defendant arrived at the central bus station in Jerusalem only at 18:09 and immediately began to load passengers and set off on their way back from Jerusalem to Haifa - all without having to comply with the break, as required by the traffic regulations and Egged Company procedures. B

Furthermore, on that day, the defendant did not make sure to drink and eat regularly. At about 7:30 pm, the defendant was driving on Route 40 from south to north. Approaching mile 283, the defendant drove in the rightmost lane, in a straight direction, out of 3 lanes, shifted left to the leftmost lane, designated a left-hand lane only, and Vesta returned to the rightmost lane.

Immediately afterwards, the defendant crossed the right-hand lane, hit the curb and hit a bus stop, which is not on line 947. As a result, the station's roof penetrated into the front-right portion of the bus, causing the death of four passengers and injuring about ten more passengers.