A quirk in the law has meant that a drunk driver, “almost three times over the legal limit”, suspected of killing a young father by knocking him off his bicycle and then dragging the bike for 4 kms has been released by police, “pending an inquiry”.
Police did not catch the driver ‘in flagrante’ explains Correio da Manhã.
Thus, it has to be ‘proved’ that he knocked the 33-year-old off his bike – although there appears to be no doubt as to this being the case. CM’s story is headlined: “Drunk kills cyclist and drags bike 4kms”.
Licínio Correia leaves a wife and four children, says the paper. He died from “serious head injuries” on Wednesday evening as he cycled to work in Azambuja.
The driver, so far unnamed, “did not stop”, stresses CM.
He has been formally made a suspect (arguido) and charged with murder and failing to offer help to his victim. But following a ‘negative’ drugs test in hospital – to rule out the use of psychotropic drugs – the man has been released on the lowest form of bail, the proviso that he remains in his area of residence.
CM explains that GNR agents stopped the driver after they noticed sparks coming from under the man’s Mitsubishi Spacestar.
As they got closer, they realised the sparks were coming from a bicycle trapped underneath.
It was only after they breathalyzed the driver (whose result showed 1.43g of alcohol per litre of blood), that the agents heard a cyclist had been “brutally hit by a hit-and-run driver” 4kms down the road in Vila Nova da Rainha.
Any defence that the dead man had been difficult to see in the darkness has been scotched by the fact that Licínio Correia’s cycle lights were still on when police came upon his battered bicycle.
The road he had been travelling on was also “well lit”, says CM, setting the situation out starkly: “The victim died and the driver is free”.
