For years, the prosecutor's office has demonstrated reluctance to collect evidence and revealed the culprits in the case of the collapsed building on the capital street. “Alabin”, in which two girls died. The Sofia Court of Appeal (SAC) came to this conclusion and ordered the prosecution to pay compensation of BGN 60,000 to the mother of Denitsa Chenisheva, who died in the accident – Alexandrina.
The blackened mother filed a lawsuit against the prosecutor's office for BGN 300,000 in non-property damages. It is under the Law on the Liability of the State and Municipalities for Damages Due to the Violated Right to Consider and Decide the Case in a Reasonable Time.
The tragic incident happened on September 19, 2006, and the case came to court only after 10 years.
Then the trial continued for another five years, and in the end all the defendants were acquitted. At first instance, the Sofia City Court ordered the prosecution to pay BGN 15,000 to Alexandrina Chenisheva, as it accepted that the main part of the damage suffered by the woman was a consequence of the loss of her only child and the acquittal of the defendants, and not because of the delay in the case .
The Sofia Court of Appeal (SAC), however, attaches much greater weight to the damage caused by the slow investigation, for which purpose a forensic psychological examination was also appointed, and according to the expert's conclusion, the mother would have been traumatized even with a guilty verdict , but delaying the process prolongs the agony of every parent who has lost their child.
„The lack of conviction of the guilty is also a trauma, but regardless of how it would have ended, if the criminal trial had ended faster the effect for the victim would not have been so severe, as the delay in the process prolongs the agony,”, concludes the expert, writes the legal portal Lex.bg.
Regarding the behavior of the investigators, the judicial panel with chairman and reporter Elizabeth Petrova wrote that it can be characterized by a reluctance to fulfill their powers by law – to collect evidence, to investigate, to exercise state coercion in such a way that the objective truth is reached and the guilty persons receive the punishments prescribed by law.
„Whether this reluctance to investigate is due to impossibility, incompetence, or some other reason, is irrelevant in the case”, writes SAS.
In the decision, the court specifies that in the first months after the tragedy, the investigation was active, and the delay began in 2007. and ended in 2016 when the case was brought to court. During this period, the court noted that there were years when nothing was done by the investigators, or several witnesses were questioned for a whole year, or several protocols were drawn up, and in the best case, an expert opinion was appointed. At the same time, however, there were two attempts to terminate the case, which were canceled by the court, and the given instructions were not implemented.
„This inaction, in violation of the provisions of the Code of Criminal Procedure, is accepted by the court as evidence of the reluctance of the prosecution to fulfill its obligations under the law, to act and collect evidence in connection with the death of the plaintiff's daughter and the charges brought. ;, states the SAS.
According to the court, this justifies the conclusion that the duration of the case of nearly 15 years is not the result of the factual and legal complexity of the investigation, but of the non-rhythmic work of the investigation led by the prosecutor's office.
In order to determine a higher amount of compensation, the SAC indicates the special interest that the case represents for the mother of the dead girl. Testimony in the case was also a relative of the woman who told about her suffering and her hopes for justice and fairness, but in the end she was totally desperate, felt powerless and shared that she felt like she was hitting her head on an iron door. In this regard, the court notes that Alexandrina Chenisheva was so distrustful and wanted the truth to be revealed that she began to make attempts to collect evidence herself.
„The experienced citizen with his personal efforts to replace the state investigation structure speaks not just of a lack of confidence in justice, but of hopelessness…The inaction of the defendant, for years, commented on in the mass media even during pendency of the proceedings, inaction despite the court's instructions, has killed the plaintiff's belief in retribution through the rule of law, for the death of her own child“, the court wrote, to motivate its decision to increase the compensation to 60,000 BGN. However, it is not final and can be appealed to the Supreme Court of Cassation.
The tragedy happened on September 19, 2006, and the case started in the first instance 10 years later. Defendants for causing the death of the two girls were the owner of the building, Georgi Kirchev, who is the manager of the company “Hrisoma“, engineer Petar Petrov, who supervised the repair of the building, Nikolay Simeonov – manager of “A3-Architecture and implementation“ and the builder Mancho Antonov, owner of the repair company ET “Media Mancho”, against whom the case was heard in absentia because he is abroad.
The building on st. “Alabin“ collapsed around 6 p.m. when 26-year-old Denitsa Chenisheva and 24-year-old Petrina Hristova were crossing the street by car. Their car was painted over, and the two girls died on the spot.
The investigation dragged on for 10 years, and the case was closed twice, but in the end an indictment was brought to the court, which was mainly based on the controversial testimony of the witness Nikolay Alexandrov. He had worked at the site and claimed that load-bearing rails and columns had been cut in the building, but repeatedly changed his testimony during the course of the investigation. Finally, he told the court that he only went to this site after its collapse to install sheet metal and a padlock, and the very first instance rejected his testimony about cut columns and rails. In the end, the defendants were acquitted in three instances, and three years ago the Supreme Court of Cassation put an end to the legal saga.