A6 crash Kaiserslautern charges three dead, Digi Mart USA News (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany): More than a year after a crash on the A6 motorway that killed three people, the Kaiserslautern public prosecutor’s office has filed charges against the alleged driver responsible, who denies having been driving at all.
The charges are directed at a 47-year-old man. Prosecutors accuse him of negligent manslaughter and deliberate endangerment of road traffic.
According to their investigation, he rammed another car at high speed on the A6 shortly before the Kaiserslautern-Ost junction.
The other vehicle caught fire in the collision, and all of its occupants died in the flames. The newspaper Die Rheinpfalz first reported the filing of charges.
According to the investigation so far, the 47-year-old was heavily intoxicated at the time of the crash. Prosecutors say he was traveling well over 200 kilometers per hour when he struck the other car, which they say was traveling at 130 kilometers per hour.
Shortly after the crash, police and prosecutors said both vehicles were combustion-engine cars. They were examined by crime scene investigators and an expert to determine why they caught fire after the collision.
Results of those examinations are not yet known.
The 47-year-old denies having been at the wheel. According to prosecutors, he claims two or three other passengers, whom he had only recently met, were in the car, and that one of them was driving and all passengers fled after the crash.
No evidence supporting this has been presented so far. He has otherwise declined to comment on the trip and is exercising his right to remain silent.
When firefighters and rescue services arrived at the scene, both vehicles were already fully engulfed in flames. The alleged driver survived with serious injuries.
Help came too late for the other three people involved.
An autopsy later established who had been in the car: a married couple from Saarbrücken, the 44-year-old man and 41-year-old woman, and a 51-year-old man from Neunkirchen in Saarland. His partner had reported him missing, and he was identified as a crash victim only days later.
The Kaiserslautern Regional Court will now decide whether to admit the charges and open a trial. No date has been set.
