Wild chase ends on horse meadow

A man from Bad Heilbrunner was sentenced to a fine of 5,400 euros by the district court in Wolfratshausen for drunk driving that was ready for film.

Bad Heilbrunn/Wolfratshausen

– For prosecutor Thomas Husband there are only two options: “Anyone who drives like this is not completely tight or is under the influence of substances.” Around 2.5 per thousand alcohol in the blood is said to be in a man (58) from Bad Heilbrunn may have been the reason why he and a Tölz couple went on a film-worthy chase that began in a parking lot on the B472 and ended in a paddock near the Wolfsgrube district of Königsdorf.

The 58-year-old has now been sentenced to a fine of 5,400 euros (90 daily rates) by the district court in Wolfratshausen for negligently endangering road traffic in combination with negligent bodily harm in two cases.

The story took place on April 30, 2022 and began with a daring U-turn on the B472.

Coming from Bad Heilbrunn, the accused had turned left with his car into the parking lot of the Gasthaus Wiesweber. A Daimler coming from Bad Tölz could only have prevented a frontal collision by braking hard.

Prosecutor: "Anyone who drives like this is not completely tight or is under the influence of substances."

During the evasive maneuver, the couple's car slipped over the curb and was damaged, and both suffered minor injuries.

The woman, who was seven months pregnant at the time, was on sick leave for two weeks because of a whiplash injury that had since healed without consequences.

When Tölzer wanted to confront Heilbrunner, he drove on without a word.

"It was difficult to follow," reported the witness.

In Tempo 30 zones, the pursued drove at 40 to 70 km/h, outside 140 to 160 km/h.

The ride ended in said horse meadow.

There the Heilbrunner turned and headed towards his pursuers.

When he stopped briefly and "got something out of his trunk", the Tölzer, whose wife had filmed the last ten or fifteen minutes of the wild ride with the cell phone camera, stopped the chase.

Risky overtaking maneuvers and massive speeding

Because the Tölz police, who were able to follow part of the journey by telephone, “had no patrol free” at the time, it took until late afternoon before they became active – after they received a message that horses had escaped and a driverless car is parked in a meadow.

Around 6 p.m. (the car chase had taken place around 2 p.m.), police found the man home — in bed, so drunk he “hardly woke up,” one officer recalled.

In the trial, the defense attorney now claimed "a significant after-dinner drink" for her client's high blood alcohol level that afternoon.

On the day of the crime, however, there was no mention of a nightcap, the police officer said, neither from the accused nor from his wife.

She told the court that her husband, after returning from the police, said he had been "followed by a vehicle for a long time and was very scared" but did not appear drunk.

The accused himself, on the advice of his defense attorney, did not comment on what happened.

It was not possible to determine when and where the man had drunk the "moderate intoxication" that an expert attested to him.

For prosecutor Thomas Mann, however, the video of the trip was meaningful enough.

“Risky overtaking manoeuvres, massive speed violations, crashing through a fence – and then it gets really wild and he has set up a threatening backdrop.

Everything has been done wrong under traffic law,” the prosecutor raged.

The driving behavior clearly speaks for alcohol.

Judge: "Extremely out of control drunk driving"

The defense saw this completely differently and criticized the work of the police: "The way it was determined here defies description." The possibility that her client was afraid of a confrontation was not taken into account at all - and the after drink was not from that to point a hand.

"What remains are assumptions, assumptions, assumptions and outrageous explanations." Therefore, only the injuries to the spouses are to be punished, for which 20 daily rates of 50 euros each (1000 euros in total) are sufficient.

Judge Helmut Berger, like the public prosecutor, saw evidence of “driving intoxicated that had gone extremely out of control” and sentenced the trained car mechanic to 90 daily rates of 60 euros each, i.e. a total of 5400 euros.

He also ordered a driver's license ban for another ten months, a total of 17 months.

Because the police had cashed in on the spot when they visited the driver's home.

However, the judgment is not yet final.

You can find more current news from the region around Bad Tölz at Merkur.de/Bad Tölz.