The Traffic Prosecutor, about the driver in the Seville accident: “We must find out why he did not see the control or take his foot off the accelerator”

Why didn't the driver of the truck that ran over him see the police checkpoint, ending the lives of six people, two of them civil guards in the operation?

The bulk of the investigation into this event, which occurred early Tuesday morning near the Sevillian municipality of Los Palacios, focuses on answering that question.

The accident has become one of the most serious accidents that have occurred on the AP-4, the highway on which the armed institute was deployed in an operation against drug trafficking.

“We must find the justification for why he did not see the control and why he did not take his foot off the accelerator,” explains to this newspaper the deputy prosecutor for Road Safety of Seville, Luis Carlos Rodríguez León, in charge of the case.

The driver, 59 years old and with no prior record, has spent his first night in prison, accused of six crimes of reckless homicide and three of serious injuries due to recklessness.

He was going 90 kilometers per hour when, without reducing speed, he rammed the cars that were part of the operation, according to the data provided by the tachograph that has been analyzed by the Civil Guard.

Investigators have made sure that there were no braking signs on the road.

“It gives the impression that he was on autopilot,” indicate sources familiar with the investigation in this regard.

During his statement in court on Tuesday, the driver assured that he did not see the control, according to judicial sources.

“These are excuses that any human being can make,” warns the prosecutor, who refers to the investigators' reports.

The accident reconstruction team of the Civil Guard stressed on Tuesday that the device was perfectly marked a kilometer before and that is why Rodríguez León insists on the relevance of the investigation.

The main hypothesis that investigators are working with is that the driver fell asleep at the wheel.

“This is what we have to investigate.

We cannot anticipate anything,” points out the prosecutor.

The investigation is in its initial phase, but it is being investigated as a traffic accident, since the proceedings are being carried out by a special traffic investigation team.

“Statistically, 90% of accidents are due to the human factor,” indicates Rodríguez León.

"When he saw the cones on the road, he must have thought that it was construction work and, as there was no traffic in front of him, he did not slow down and that was when they signaled him at the control and he made the sudden maneuver, invading the other lane of the highway," explain the research sources consulted about the main hypothesis they are considering to clarify what happened.

The cones, however, remained intact, those same interlocutors note.

This sudden maneuver occurred around 4:40 in the morning on Tuesday and with it it ran over the three Civil Guard cars that were part of the device and, at least, also two of the three civilian vehicles that had been detained. in control.

Thus he killed six people and seriously injured three others, civil guards.

The agents who were killed or injured were part of the Rapid Action Group (GAR) of the armed institute, an elite unit specialized in the fight against drug trafficking, the objective of that control.

Several anti-drug sources indicate that the location of the control, next to the Guadalquivir River, one of the main entry routes for drugs from the Strait, had been carefully studied to achieve its objective: to control possible transport of drug boats, explains one of those. interlocutors, although the device was not part of any specific operation in progress.

“The selection [of the detained people] was made based on the experience of the GAR, looking for drug trafficking profiles,” those same sources indicate.

This fact explains that, of the four deceased civilians who were at the checkpoint, two had a history of drug trafficking, as this newspaper reported.

They would be DP, 47 years old and from Dos Hermanas (Seville), with a long and long history of drug trafficking, and M., 53 years old and resident in Ceuta.

The other two deceased civilians are a 50-year-old resident of Barbate (Cádiz), and a 20-year-old citizen of foreign nationality, probably Moroccan, who resided in Bizkaia.

Eneko Lira, who would have turned 37 this Thursday, and Juan Jesús López, 34, are the two GAR civil guards who died on Tuesday after being run over.

Lira was a first corporal in the corps, which he had joined in 2015. He had been stationed in the Balearic Islands and Gipuzkoa and had the Cross with a white badge of the Order of Merit of the Civil Guard and the NATO medal, among other decorations.

López, from El Ejido (Almería), had joined the Civil Guard in 2019 and had been stationed in Menorca.

Both had joined the Rural Action Unit last year.

His three seriously injured companions remain hospitalized, two of them in the Virgen de Valme, and the one with the most complications, in the Virgen del Rocío.

In addition to the “notorious seriousness” of what happened, the other reasons why the judge ordered the provisional detention of the truck driver were to avoid the risk of escape and that he could “eliminate evidence in this incipient phase of the investigation,” the sources indicate. judicial authorities consulted.

The search of the truck was carried out by the Civil Guard with dogs specialized in the detection of narcotic substances, and it has been ruled out that others were hidden among the load of tomatoes that it was transporting from La Línea de la Concepción (Cádiz) to Guarromán (Jaén). products, including drugs, which supports the theory of an accident.

Both the driver of the truck and his companion, who was sitting in the passenger seat — and who was sleeping when the crash occurred, was unharmed and is free — work for Transmoro SL, a logistics and transportation company in Lucena del Puerto. (Huelva), who has declined to speak for this newspaper and refers to a future statement.

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