Czech Republic: Driver runs into Romani boy in crosswalk, shouts racist abuse at him and drives off
Czech news servers Blesk.cz and TN.cz have reported that police from the town of Česká Lípa are investigating the incredible case of a driver who ran into a nine-year-old Romani boy in a crosswalk and then began shouting racist abuse at him instead of summoning medical help. He also shouted insults at the boy’s mother, who barely escaped being hit by the car herself.
The young man then drove off and ran a red light at another intersection. He later turned himself in to the police.
The driver now faces up to one year in prison. The accident was filmed by a CCTV system.
The incident happened in the center of Česká Lípa when Ms Gáborová was bringing her son Kevin to school. “He crashed right into my leg. It still hurts now,” the boy described to TN.cz.
“He told us we were ‘fucking cikáni’,” the boy’s mother told TN.cz. The boy confirmed that.
“He cursed us out as ‘black mambas’ and ‘cikánští faggots’,” the boy described. The driver then fled the scene.
The boy’s mother was so shaken that she did not know what to do at that moment. Passers-by converging on the scene called the police.
“An ambulance drove up and brought us to the hospital. He didn’t feel well, so they had him lie down,” the mother told TV NOVA.
The CCTV footage shows the driver pulling away and committing the misdemeanor of running the red light. “He left the scene of the accident and then ran a red light at the next intersection,” Milan Bradáč of the Česká Lípa traffic inspectorate told TV NOVA.
The 19-year-old driver turned himself in at a police station some time later. “He admitted running into the boy in the crosswalk but accused the boy of being to blame. He absolutely denied having expressed himself in racist terms to the young pedestrian and his mother and also denied having run the red light at the next intersection,” police spokesperson Ivana Baláková told news server Blesk.cz.
Footage from the CCTV camera at the intersection of Děčínská and Sokolská Streets, of course, is evidence of the fact that the driver left the scene of the accident and ran the red light. If convicted, he faces up to one year in prison.
