Illustrative photo – On December 9, 2019, the District Court in Uherské Hradiště started again to deal with the tragic accident at the rally in Lopeník, where four girls died in 2012. In the picture are the defendants Petr Plášek (right) and Josef Náshel.
Brno – The Regional Court of Appeal in Brno today upheld a suspended sentence for track commissioner Petar Plášek for misconduct in organizing a rally in Lopeník in the Uherskohradišť region. He reduced the duration of the sentence to six months suspended for one year.
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Photo gallery: Tragedy at the rally in Lopeník
Initially, the court in Uherské Hradiště imposed an eighteen-month prison sentence on the man with a conditional suspension of 18 months. In autumn 2012, a racing car driven by attorney Michael Bartončík hit six people standing by the track. Four girls died, two people were injured. The court confirmed the acquittal of four other men who participated in the organization of the race. The court's decision is final.
All five defendants faced up to six years in prison for negligent homicide and negligent grievous bodily harm. They have previously denied guilt. Plášek, who was the only one of them in court today, expressed regret. “I would like to say that I am very, very sorry for what happened. It's hard for me to talk about it, but I still don't know what I did wrong,” said Plášek.
Plášek appealed against the verdict of the first instance court from last April on guilt and punishment. In the case, the public prosecutor also appealed against the acquittal part of the judgment. In the case of Plášek, the court of first instance reduced the criminal qualification. According to the plaintiff, Plášek “violated an important duty resulting from his employment, profession, position or function or imposed on him by law.” But the court found the man guilty according to the paragraph, which does not refer to the violation of an important duty. The man thus faced a maximum three-year prison sentence when using this paragraph.
The President of the Senate, Josef Teplý, stated today that several coincidences and several errors were responsible for the accident. He mentioned, for example, an insufficiently elaborated safety plan, according to him purely formal training of commissars, bad weather conditions or a rider's riding error. “All these circumstances resulted in a tragic event,” Teplý said. According to him, the guilt of Plášek was unequivocally proven. The other defendants cannot be found criminally responsible, but according to him, they bear moral responsibility for the consequences, added the judge.
“We can be satisfied with the decision, the legal qualification has been reduced. For us, it was important that it was clearly stated, that not only my client was involved in the accident, but also the philandering, as the chairman of the senate said, of the organizers, and I think that is enough satisfaction for us,” said Pláška's defense attorney Tomáš Vymazal after the announcement of the decision.
According to the court, track commissioner Plášek did not expel the girls from the track in violation of his duties. According to the public prosecutor, the chairman of the race organizing committee Petr Bujáček, head of the special stage Josef Náshel, chief officer for safety Miroslav Smolík and safety delegate Václav Filip violated the provisions of the international sports regulations regarding the organization of the rally, the creation of a safety plan, securing places on the track or pre-race checks .
Bartončík rented a Mitsubishi Lancer EVO IX for the race on a closed track, his brother Josef Bartončík was his co-driver. They were not charged in the case, although, according to the police, rider error was also a factor in the accident in addition to the strong wind. The same racing car crashed with different crews already at other rallies in 2010 and 2011. The defendants Bujáček and Smolík claimed that the car had long-term technical problems, but its owner denied it. Plášek, who himself was injured in the accident, pointed to the training he had received before the race and to the fact that the prohibited area for spectators was not sufficiently marked at the site of the accident. This was also claimed by the relatives of the victims. However, the organizers stated that the marked location was.
The tragedy, in which the girls between the ages of seven and 20 died, happened on November 10, 2012. In 2016, the district court imposed an eighteen-month suspended sentence on the then only defendant, Plášek penalty. The regional court subsequently overturned the verdict and returned the case to the public prosecutor for further investigation, who later expanded the indictment to include four more people. The district court started to deal with the case again in December 2019, it issued a final judgment last spring.
