Palma (dpa) – A good two years after the sensational death of a German holidaymaker on Palma's airport highway, two accused Spaniards have emerged Mallorca were sentenced to prison terms of 15 and 12.5 years. The Palma regional court announced the sentence.
The two men had already been found guilty by a jury on Wednesday last week. The responsible judge has now decided on the sentence. The convicted must also pay the parents and sister of the 20-year-old victim compensation of almost 200,000 euros.
The two defendants were accused of having encountered the young man from northern Hesse on the street near the Ballermann party mile in the island's capital Palma late in the evening of October 8, 2022, taking him with him in their van and later taking him out of the car on the airport highway brought to have thrown.
The defendants probably wanted to rob the German
The majority of the nine jurors saw this scenario as proven, even though the two Spaniards had protested in court that the young man had jumped out of the car himself. According to forensic experts, the German's death was most likely caused by being run over. A following car rolled over the victim.
According to investigators, the two Spaniards wanted to rob the drunk German. According to court documents, the vacationer had 2.41 per mille of alcohol in his blood at the time of the crime.
The public prosecutor's office and the lawyers for the vacationer's family initially assumed it was a murder and therefore each demanded 25 years in prison for the two defendants. If the crime were classified as manslaughter, they had pleaded for a sentence of 15 years in prison.
Tip on white van was crucial
The guilty verdict was little consolation for the victim's father. “There are only losers in this process,” he said to journalists last week as he left the court at the end of the hearing. But he thanked the investigators and the court for their work.
Autumn caused a great stir in Mallorca. Investigators originally assumed it was an accident. After a while, a witness who was sitting in the car behind the van led investigators to the trail of a white van. A year after the incident – in October 2023 – this led to the arrest of the Spaniards. The witness testified in court that he saw a person fall onto the road “like a sack of potatoes.”
