Budapest, December 3 (MTI) – Eva Rezesova, the Slovak driver who caused a fatal accident in Hungary last year, has been taken out of house arrest and placed back in pre-trial detention, following a binding ruling by a Budapest court on Tuesday.
The court quashed an earlier ruling of house arrest, a court spokesperson told MTI. The suspect has already been taken to prison, said Janos Koszta.
Rezesova is accused of having caused a fatal accident killing four people on the M3 motorway in August, 2012. In the early hours of August 21 last year, the defendant, driving a BMW X5 at 170kmh in the direction of Budapest, crashed into a Fiat Punto on M3 from behind. The Fiat was engulfed in fire, and all occupants, two women and two men, died.
The district court of Godollo, acting as a primary court, on November 22 sentenced Rezesova in a non-binding ruling to six years in prison for drunk driving causing the four deaths.
She was placed under house arrest after having been kept in pre-trial detention since August last year. Her defence lawyer requested the cessation of the detention. She was transferred to a property in the capital — according to press reports a luxury apartment house on the Danube embankment — and had to wear a tracking device. The prosecutor appealed for a stricter punishment and against releasing her to house arrest, citing the severity of the crime.
Earlier, the prosecutor proposed that Rezesova should be handed a prison term over 10 years, while the defence sought her acquittal of all charges. The defendant said at the time that the alcohol in her blood had come from a medicine she had taken for her cough and that she took a draught of vodka in her shock after the crash.
Explaining Tuesday’s court ruling, Koszta said the defendant should stay in prison until the upper-level court procedure is completed or maximum for the length of the prison-term defined in the non-binding ruling. He said the defendant’s exceptional financial conditions and her network of connections abroad constitute a great degree of risk of escaping and this requires the strictest precautionary measures.
According to Slovak press reports, Rezesova is the daughter of Alexander Rezes, Slovakia’s transport minister in the 1990’s and the country’s second richest businessman at the time.
Photo: mandiner.hu
Source: http://hungarymatters.hu/
