A DRUNK driver was yesterday jailed for three years for fatally injuring a boy of 17 in the early hours of New Year’s Day.
Savvas Savva, 29 from Tseri, pleaded guilty to causing the death of Giorgos Mavrikios by negligent driving and abandoning the scene of the accident, but denied drink driving, despite twice failing a breathalyser later that morning.
In the trial that followed, attended throughout by grieving friends and relatives of the pupil, Judge Alexia Lycourgou deemed that the driver was over the legal alcohol limit on that fateful night.
Mavrikios had been standing next to a car parked on the pavement on Strovolos Avenue in Tseri at around 3.20am on January 1 with his girlfriend, Agathi Tryfonos, also 17, when a white Mercedes careered into them and drove off.
“Fatal traffic accidents have become a destructive phenomenon in our modern society,” the judge said yesterday. “The unnecessary death of our fellow citizens due to selfish, negligent and dangerous driving was once again made apparent.”
Earlier in the trial, the 29-year-old electrician said he had been working until 11pm on New Year’s Eve and had gone to his mother’s house for soup because he was feeling a little bit ill. He also claimed to have had a glass of wine.
He said he had then decided to go to a pub because he didn’t have anyone to spend New Year’s with.
“At the pub, I watched television with the owner and ordered a quarter bottle of whisky,” he had told the court.
“I ordered a second quarter bottle of whisky but I only drank one glass from it because I felt ill and decided to leave… On the way home, I could hardly keep my eyes open… I remember hitting what I thought was a side railing on the way home but since my car was the only thing damaged I continued my course and drove home.”
A police investigator told the court that they went to Savva’s house later that morning and found him sleeping. They then breathalysed the divorced father-of-two at his home and found that he had 74mg of alcohol in his blood.
A second blood alcohol test taken later at the station revealed a reading of 44mg.
The legal alcohol limit in Cyprus is 22mg.
Earlier this week, Savva’s defence lawyer Roberto Vrahimis had told the court that his client had been deeply affected by the death of Mavrikios and was ready to face the consequences of his action.
Yesterday, Judge Lycourgou sentenced Savva to three years’ imprisonment for the charge of causing death through negligent driving. She also ordered ten points on his licence, and its suspension for four years as of yesterday.
He was also handed lesser prison sentences and penalty points for the other charges of drunk driving and abandoning the scene of an accident, but they will run concurrently with the more serious charge of causing death through negligent driving.
The sentence, however, did little to appease relatives of the victim, who voiced their outrage outside the courtroom over what they claimed was a lenient punishment.
“The boy’s gone and all he got was three years,” said one angry relative.
“What a great justice system we have here.”
