On July 10, 2021, Vincent R. races down a country road in Brandenburg at 230 km/h – until it bangs. Two women and an unborn baby die. The Neuruppin district court must now judge: Was R.’s trip simply negligent – or did she make him a murderer?
July 10, 2021, just under six seconds until the collision. The black painted Mercedes AMG shoots at 230 kilometers per hour over the B96a in Brandenburg. For the driver, Vincent R., the treetops on the side of the road are only dimly visible, he can hardly stay in lane. The young driver races toward a right-hand bend. He brakes briefly, 165 kilometers per hour. Then R. presses the gas pedal down: He takes this curve at full throttle. The 510 hp sports car is now half a second behind the old Skoda on the opposite lane. The speedometer needle tears the 177. Then it bangs.
At the district court in Neuruppin, the judge, public prosecutor, defense attorney and accident expert scrolled for hours through the analysis of the airbag control unit in the destroyed Mercedes. The stored data allows Vincent R.’s driving behavior to be precisely reconstructed in the last few seconds before the accident. An important indicator for the district court of Neuruppin. The 24-year-old has had to answer for his dangerous journey through the Brandenburg district of Overhavel since the beginning of October. The verdict will be made next week. The judges and jury must then decide whether R’s frenzy was simply negligent – or whether it made him a murderer.
Two occupants of the old Skoda did not survive R’s journey. The driver’s unborn baby could not be saved either. The two women, aged 28 and 32, died of polytrauma – they suffered countless organ injuries and broken bones, their aorta ruptured and their brain was partially torn off. The injuries caused by the force of the impact were so severe, the coroner summarized for the court, “they could not have been treated even with immediate help”.
During the speech, some relatives and friends leave the room. Florian O. and Tina K., the fiancé and wife of the deceased, try to keep their composure in tears. They were also in the Skoda at the time, but survived the collision with the Mercedes with serious injuries. In the trial against Vincent R., they appear as joint plaintiffs. Because Vincent R. “took everything” from them, as K. said, according to the “Märkische Oderzeitung”. And because “the future is gone now,” as O. put it.
The bereaved have to live with this stroke of fate because Vincent R. wanted to splurge on that July day last year. That’s how the prosecutor thinks it is. This began in the early evening when R. drove to a birthday party in the Mercedes. The trainee had previously borrowed the vehicle, which costs around 70,000 euros, from his employer, a car dealership in the nearby small town. Something like that happened quite often, the dealership confirmed in court. For good performance or if your own car was being repaired. In addition, according to the “Märkische Oderzeitung”, R. was considered an experienced driver. This time he was supposed to get a different Mercedes – the B-Class with less horsepower. But R. took the AMG key.
At the birthday party, the invited guests were impressed by the luxury car in front of the door. If you wanted, you could test sit and let the engine roar. R. shone as the proud owner, it was celebrated – and drunk. Shortly after 8 p.m., R. got back into the car “to get something,” as he testified in court. At that time he was already drunk – the forensic report will later determine at least 1.7 per mille. Oliver B. sat in the passenger seat. Arrived on the B96a, R. then pressed the accelerator pedal to impress the 33-year-old, prosecutor Lara Garnkaufer described what happened at the start of the process. The charge was murder. Vincent R. caused the death of two people for base motives.
Vincent R., this is a slight young man with a sidecut and a lot of gel in his blond hair. He has now lost his apprenticeship position, as has his girlfriend at the time. He has been in custody since April. He can no longer remember the accident. Only that he climbed out of the Mercedes after the impact. The police officers later caught him – on the run, as the public prosecutor adds. R. doesn’t have much more to add in the process. Only once does he ask T. and O. for forgiveness, although he knows that “it’s not possible to find the right words”.
T.’s attorney describes the accused as “cool and calculating.” R. absorbs these words without moving. In the courtroom, he almost disappears behind his lawyer and in his dark gray turtleneck. He has his hands in handcuffs and his fingernails have been chewed off. The young man doesn’t seem up to the situation. Just as he was no match for the sports car on the evening of July 10th.
The judges at the district court in Neuruppin must now decide whether the evidence and reports justify a conviction for murder. Two people and an unborn baby are dead. However – and that’s the difficulty in all speeding cases – R. didn’t want them to die. However, a penalty for murder or manslaughter requires intent on the part of the perpetrator. “That’s why the conditional intent plays a decisive role in cases of frenzy,” explains Uwe Lenhart, specialist lawyer for criminal law and traffic law in an interview with ntv.de. “It’s enough if the perpetrator realizes that his action is dangerous and he does it anyway.” That means: R. didn’t have to have got into the car with the will to kill people. It’s enough if he didn’t care.
However, the court would have to prove this to the accused. Did he really not care or did he trust that nothing would happen? This tightrope walk decides on intent or negligence – and thus on 15 years imprisonment or a maximum of five years.
Now the judges cannot look into the mind of the accused. “The court must therefore derive the intent from objective circumstances,” says Lenhart. How fast was the speeder going? And how ruthless? How heavy was the traffic? “Even thoughtless statements to the expert or the court can lead to the conviction of the court that the accused has accepted fatal accidents,” says the lawyer. “And maybe he also has a YouTube channel where he presents himself as a speedster.” All these indications result in a tendency at the end of the process: for intent or for negligence.
In the case of the Kudamm racer, who caused the death of a pensioner in a car race in February 2016, the court in 2017 for the first time ruled in favor of conditional intent and a conviction for murder in such a constellation. The reasoning at the time: the driver’s “reckless and highly risky behavior” was “hardly capable of improvement”. The driver must therefore have accepted that other road users are endangered.
Does that also apply to Vincent R.? It all depends on how the Neuruppin district court evaluates the evidence, explains Lenhart. Whether speeders are assumed to have a conditional intent is “always a matter of taste in a court”. The range of penalties for speeders in recent years shows just how much: The convictions range from suspended sentences to short prison sentences for illegal car racing and life imprisonment for murder. Since the Kudamm Raser case, many charges have been murder. However, most of them are downgraded in the course of the negotiations – for lack of intent.
This is also evident in the case of Vincent R. On the penultimate day of the hearing, public prosecutor Lara Garnkaufer announced in the Neuruppin district court that she would withdraw from the murder charge. The evidence speaks against intent to kill. The opinion of the forensic psychiatrist Hans-Ludwig Kröber, who described R. as a driver who believes “that he can drive a car so well that he doesn’t make any mistakes even when drunk,” has great weight here. He did not realize the danger – also due to alcohol. The driving behavior in the last few seconds before the accident also speaks for this. If R. had no idea what could happen as a result of his trip, he cannot have accepted it either.
R. still behaved “grossly in violation of traffic regulations and inconsiderately,” explained the yarn buyer. Two young women, one of them heavily pregnant, did not survive his “fateful journey”. It is now up to the judges to find the right sentence for this.