Croatian media: The driver declared that he had not slept, but the prosecution has a witness

District Court interrogator Judge Slavonski Brod on Tuesday morning placed a month in custody for Deva Tours bus driver D. L, suspected of causing the tragic accident on Sunday morning, where 10 people were left dead.

The case was taken by District Attorney of Slavonski Brod State, who proposed that the driver be assigned a month of detention due to the risk of escape.

The Kosovo driver was taken under protection from Zagreb lawyers Igor Cisper and Ljubo Pavasovic Viskovic, who, according to Croatian media Jutarnji.hr, were allegedly employed by the driver's family.

According to this medium, the transfer of the case to the District Prosecution means that, unlike initial information, prosecutors concluded that this was a qualified form of the serious traffic accident that the driver could face up to 15 years in prison.

Although the suspected driver had information that he had fallen asleep at the wheel, his lawyer Cisper denied these claims, saying his client had never told anyone that he had fallen asleep during the ride.

The driver was quietly protected in his first police interrogation and later before the State Attorney.

He's sorry it all happened. We'll see further. As far as I have information from him, he never told anyone he fell asleep at the” wheel, said lawyer Cisper yesterday.

In his first interrogation, D. L. was questioned without a lawyer, and then the police accused him of sleeping at the wheel. Even if he had admitted sleep at that time, this declaration could not be used against him in the criminal procedure, since he had been questioned about a smaller work for which the defender's presence was not required. Prosecutors later decided to reinforce “the qualifications, however, for the defence to be valid for such an act as legal evidence, it is necessary that the suspect have a protector during interrogation”, he stressed.

Among the witnesses, according to Jutarnji.hr, only one was said to be able to testify that D. L. He was driving the bus at the time of the accident, and others were asleep during that time.

Deputy District Attorney of Slavonski Brod, Franjo Korunic, announced yesterday in a statement to the media that as part of the accident investigation, an expertise of the bus will be ordered to see if there has been destruction.

Croatian media also cites the case of driver D.L.'s arrest in 2017 under suspicion of drug smuggling.

In the tragic accident at Slavonski Brod, 10 people died and some of the victims are expected to be buried today. /reporter/