SKOPJE, Macedonia: A second person has died following a crash during the Gumball 3000 rally, and a British race driver blamed for the accident was stopped trying to leave the country.
Hospital officials in Skopje on Saturday said the wife of a man killed in Wednesday's accident had also died after suffering critical injuries.
British driver Nicholas Morley, 30, was charged with endangering traffic and abandoning an accident victim. He was released from custody in the southern town of Ohrid late Friday after being granted bail set at €25,000 (US$33,900).
Within hours of that decision, authorities said they stopped Morley at an airport in Skopje as he was preparing to board a private jet.
"He was prevented from leaving the country at Skopje's airport late Friday. Morley had his passport back but we stop him," police spokesman Ivo Kotevski told The Associated Press.
The deadly crash occurred near Struga, about 190 kilometers (120 miles) from Skopje.
Police said Morley and Matthew McConvile, 32, were driving a Porsche 911 on the 4,825-kilometer (3,000-mile) race across Europe. They had been heading to neighboring Albania.
The rally, based on the 1970s road trip movie, was canceled on Thursday as a mark of respect for Cepuljoski, race founder Maximillion Cooper said in a statement.
The race started on Sunday in London, and was to wound through 16 countries before ending in London on Saturday.
The victims of the crash were identified as Vladimir Cepuljoski and his wife Margarita, and elderly couple from Struga. The husband was buried Friday.
Their death has drawn nationwide sympathy. The couple's son dead of a heart attack a year ago, while their daughter is seriously ill.
1 comment:
Today(6th June) I witnessed the most serious example of Miscarriage of Justice it is possible to imagine in the court of Macedonia and the trial of Nicholas Morley.The defense lawyers destroyed the so called ‘’expert'’ who had earlier claimed Morley was travelling at 160kms, thus enabling the prosecutor to press the hugely onerous charge of Reckless Driving. The courts so called expert ,who in evidence admitted he was unemployed, and who some locals said was in fact just a part time self taught guy, admitted he used his own secret formula to calculate accident speeds but could not or would not tell the court what it was based on. The destruction of his evidence was embarrassing and complete and I could not believe that he did not stand up and withdraw from the trial.The man had absolute zero expert credibility .
THEN to make the disgrace even worse the Court refused to allow the 2 experts for the defense to give their evidence, or for it to be ever considered by the Court, and gave no reason for such refusal. One of these experts was the world renowned scientist who investigated Princess Diana’s death crash and he had painstakingly reconstructed the accident judging the unfortunate dead driver to be totally responsible for failing to Stop at a Halt and directly entering Morley’s path only 30 metres in front of him.This was confirmed in Court by the man’s own daughter who stated to the court that it was not Morley's fault.
Then the Judge also refused to review the pathology reports which showed how and why the 2 people died, whether it was it as a result of high speed collision, whether they were wearing seat belts, was the VW car roadworthy etc, etc.
I shudder to think how this Court can expect to dispense Justice when every tenet of accepted legal practice is being so blatantly ignored.
I pray for Morley! He was instantly judged guilty by the worlds press before anyone even asked him what really happened that sad day!
Now a local judge is expected to conduct a fair unbiased trial without allowing the defence to present any evidence to him. What is this Judge trying to hide from the world? Justice?
Macedonia thinks it should be accepted into the EU when it still has a court system that allows judges to behave like this ?
SHAME
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