Michael Coy
A DRIVER who killed a pedestrian in Nijar not only failed to report the collision: he tried to cover it up by faking a different accident.
However, the sophisticated scientific techniques of Guardia Civil investigators have now led to the culprit’s arrest, it was announced.
GIAT is the Traffic Investigation and Analysis Group, and officers of this unit swiftly unravelled the sequence of events. The fatal accident occurred a month ago, but investigators at the scene quickly realised that subterfuge was at play.
In late February, a man’s dead body was discovered beside the AL-3106 highway in the township of Nijar-Cabo de Gata. The victim had clearly been struck by a car, and there were no reports of the incident having been called in.
The Guardia Civil began investigating on the basis of a hit-and-run crime. After an exhaustive reconstruction of the events and a thorough analysis of the pieces of vehicle wreckage found at the scene, it was possible to determine the make, model, and approximate date of manufacture of the car involved, thus narrowing down the number of vehicles with the same characteristics in the area.
When a car strikes a person, fragments of paint and metal adhere to the victim’s clothing. This led to the discovery that the lessee of a vehicle from a rental company based in Níjar had handed in a vehicle for repair. He apparently claimed that it had been involved in an accident with a truck on a farm in Agua Amarga (Almería). This was a lie intended to conceal the truth.
Once the vehicle was located (it had been handed over to a workshop in a town in Murcia for repair), a thorough inspection of the damage was carried out. It was found that the damage was consistent with the fatal road accident under investigation.
Wreckage found at the scene matched the damage to the vehicle itself. The police identified the alleged driver and learned that he was already “under judicial arrest”, so a search operation was organised.
Under judicial arrest strongly hints at ongoing parallel prosecutions, and the likelihood that the driver is currently on court bail.
It emerged that he had adopted numerous security measures to evade police action for this and other previous incidents.
In respect of the February killing of the pedestrian, he has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident without offering assistance, and held in custody.
Both the proceedings and the detainee have been handed over to Investigative Court No. 4 of Almería. Under Spanish law it is a criminal offence to fail to report a serious accident, and it is also a crime not to offer assistance to an injured person.
