On its official website, the prosecutor’s office stated that, in addition to increasing the prison sentence for the 68-year-old defendant for killing the man, the Guimarães Court of Appeal also increased the ban on driving any motorized vehicle from one year and six months to two years.
On March 14, 2023, the Vila Real Court had sentenced the man to 17 years in prison for qualified homicide.
The prosecutor’s office explained that it had “partially granted” the appeal filed by the Public Prosecutor’s Office (MP) and “deemed inadmissible” the appeal presented by the defendant.
In the released information, the prosecutor’s office recalled that it had been proven that on January 6, 2023, at around 09:20, in the parish of Vilar de Nantes, in Chaves, the defendant fatally ran over the elderly man, projecting him about three meters.
As a result of the impact, the victim suffered serious injuries to various parts of the body, particularly pelvic injuries that were the direct cause of death, it emphasized.
The court also found it proven that in 1996, the victim filed a legal action against the defendant for payment of a debt, following which, in 1997, two tractors belonging to the defendant were seized, it added.
This action ended in December 1997 with the defendant paying the amount owed, and the seizure of the aforementioned tractors was ordered to be lifted, the prosecutor’s office underlined.
“The court had further considered that the defendant acted with the intention of taking revenge on the victim for having filed a legal action against him in which the two tractors had been seized, not accepting the defendant’s version that the run-over was accidental or negligent,” it emphasized.
At the beginning of the trial in January of this year, the defendant told the panel of judges that he did not see anyone, that he only felt a shock on the right side of the car and thought he had hit a garbage can on the side of the road, and that only when he stopped at home did he realize that his mirror was damaged.
