The tears of the driver of the Alvia before the judge: "I ask the victims to forgive me, it was an accident, I could not help it"

• First day The judge stops Adif's attempt to remove the security measures from the trial route for the Alvia accident

• Courts The defendant from Adif, beaten by the father of an Alvia victim in the first session of the trial: "Now you show your face"

The driver of the derailed Alvia train in

,

, could not bear the pressure and burst into tears.

Sitting before the judge who judges him for the tragic accident, at the moment of remembering what happened on the tracks of

, tears came to his eyes and, as he had already done in a letter sent to the victims, he once again asked their forgiveness for what happened.

"What I reiterate is that I ask the victims to forgive me. It was an accident, I couldn't help it."

These were the driver's last words after a statement lasting nearly an hour in which he explained what happened on the day of the events.

He had only been declaring and responding to his defense for seven minutes when tears prevented him from speaking for the first time.

After asking "sorry" three times in a row, the judge gave him a short break until he could resume speaking.

During his statement, he had to resort to a tissue on several occasions to dry his tears, especially at times when he recalled what had happened.

Faced with the more technical questions, she remained more assertive and explained that, after answering a call from the controller on the corporate mobile phone, "he misplaced me, I thought I was in the previous tunnel."

Garzón Amo's statement opened this Thursday the second session of the trial that is being held in the Criminal Court number 2 of Santiago de Compostela for the accident that left 80 dead and 144 injured on July 24, 2013. He refused to answer questions of the parties, limiting himself only to the questioning of his lawyer, Manuel Prieto.

The driver is co-accused along with Adif's traffic safety director at the time of the accident, Andrés Cortabitarte.

Both are prosecuted for 80 crimes of homicide due to serious professional negligence, 145 injuries due to serious professional negligence and a crime of damage.

The prosecutor in the case, Mario Piñeiro, requests four years in prison for each and that Garzón be disqualified from his profession during the time of the sentence -although he is already pre-retired- and Cortabitarte the same time for the exercise of any profession that implies management, safety or responsibility in railway infrastructures.

The trial resumed this Thursday with more security than on the first day, in such a way that access to the building where the oral hearing is held was regulated to prevent the defendants, the public and the journalists from coinciding in the same space after the small incident recorded on the first day, in which several victims of the accident rebuked Cortabitarte at the exit and, amid the screams, the father of a young woman who died on the tracks hit the back of the head with a blow accused.

After the impact, at first, the former senior Adif official turned around defiantly, but at the time, he seemed to suffer a little dizziness.

The alleged aggressor was identified by the National Police, who stepped up surveillance the next morning.

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• Santiago de Compostela

• Ministry of Defence

• National Police

• Train accident in Santiago

• Justice