According to a news report by national broadcaster RTL, last Saturday evening, a lorry driver was killed at the Lehrte restop near Hanover after being run over in the aftermath of a heated argument with a colleague.
A police statement cited by RTL says that one of the two lorry drivers involved in the argument got into his vehicle, ran over the man he had been arguing with and then just drove on. The police nonetheless believes that it was not the intention of the driver to run over his colleague.
Officers ordered the 38-year-old HGV driver to take a blood test, as he smelled of alcohol when he was arrested. He is now being investigated for negligent homicide, fleeing a traffic accident and endangering road traffic as a result of drunkenness.
RTL reports that the victim was injured so badly that he died at the scene of the accident. It is believed the man who died was a 40-year-old truck driver from Russia who had been working for a Lithuanian freight forwarding company.
Meanwhile, a significantly less serious albeit unsettling incident at a German HGV parking area occurred in the country’s Thuringia region on the same evening.
An official report by the regional police documents how at the Industriepark-Nord parking area near Meuselwitz, an argument between two truck drivers saw one trucker block the exit to the HGV park.
The driver who blocked the exit, a 40-year-old Pole, did so to prevent his 62-year-old fellow countryman from driving out. When officers arrived on site, the 40-year-old had locked himself in his vehicle and was seen drinking beer in the cab – something he continued to do despite the presence of the police.
According to the police, it took several attempts to persuade the man to get out of the vehicle. When he eventually did, the man “could hardly stand on his feet”. A breath test was conducted and the driver was found to be comfortably above the limit.
Photo: Jochen Teufel, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons (illustrative image of the Lehrte restop)
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