Israel's News & Views BlogSome readers of this blog magazine may recall an earlier article dealing with a fatal road accident involving a wealthy businessman and a young woman and her six year old child – both of whom were killed instantly when their car was struck by this man, who was driving a large SUV vehicle, more commonly known as a ‘4X4′.
The SUV, a nearly new Volkswagen Touareg was, as it turned out, driven by one of Tel Aviv’s most prestigious lawyers, Dori Keglasbad, who was able to walk away with only light injuries, while his unfortunate victims, 23 year old Yevgania Wexler and her son, Arthur were killed. Though subsequent lab tests determined that Mr. K’s blood alcohol level was “within normal limits” an on-going police investigation has come to the conclusion that Mr. K. may have caused the accident by paying too much attention to a cell phone conversation he was involved in at the time of the crash. His car was found to be traveling ’slightly in excess’ of the legal speed limit for the road he was traveling on, Namir Blvd, which being inside city limits is a maximum 60 km per hour (his speedometer registered 80 kmh).
Though Kegalsbad has admitted he was the one who struck Ms. Wexler’s Fiat Punto, causing it to become semi-airborne and careen into other vehicles nearby, he has apparently assembled a legal defense team par excellance to try to get the charges reduced from more serious ones like manslaughter or negligent homicide to one of causing personal injury by negligence a tort or crime somewhere between a misdemeanor and a felony. Mr. K. and his legal defense team were due to meet with the Tel Aviv magistrate in order to try to reach some kind of compromise involving the seriousness of the charges. He has even appealed to the City Prosecutor’s office not to ‘bow to public pressure’ concerning this unfortunate matter.
To this day, the police have still not given an official verdict as to who was totally responsible for this accident. Witnesses who saw all or part of the accident are still being interviewed and this is probably why Mr. K. decided to go ahead and say that :
1. He was driving the black VW Taureg that struck Ms. Wexler’s car, and
2. He was talking on his cell phone at the time (he couldn’t get around this as the
police were able to obtain a recording of the actual conversation).
What the outcome will be on this entire tragedy remains to be seen. One thing that cannot be argued, by either Mr. K. nor his team of defense advocates, was that two lives were taken. Ms. Wexler, who immigrated to Israel from the Ukraine, was a promising athlete and might have represented Israel in the 2008 Olympiad in Beijing. That possibility won’t happen now, and only Ms. W’s relatives are left to mourn her loss. This event is just another episode in the continued slaughter of people on Israelis motorways. The question here is whether high level, influential people like Dori Keglasbad will get off easy, despite taking two precious lives.
The ‘jury’ is still out on this case.
Post a Comment