Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
If there is a profile of the Bulgarian road killer, it is not defined by origin, but by the sense of impunity. Most often he is young or middle-aged, drives faster than allowed, overtakes risky, has taken drugs or alcohol, and often has other violations behind him. He may drive an expensive jeep or an old car, be from the capital or a small town, but he believes in one thing - control is weak and the law will not reach him.
When Bulgaria has been among the European leaders in road deaths for years, the ethnicization of accidents hides the real culprit - the failure of institutions.
The real culprit
The Roma origin of the drivers of cars who caused the serious accident on "Chelopeshko Shose" because of a race unleashed a wave of ethnic hatred on social networks.
The victims of the accident are now four, two of whom are Indian citizens. There are still life-threatening injuries. Only the lightning-fast intervention of firefighters in the "Kremikovtsi" area prevented the explosion of the city bus, which was hit by a burning car. Then there would most likely have been no survivors.
But Georgi Semerdzhiev, who caused the accident that killed two young women in Sofia, is not a Roma. His jeep drove at high speed through the intersection of two boulevards and hit a taxi and the elevator leading to the nearby metro station.
Dimitar Lyubenov, who crashed his Porsche into the car in front of him at 195 km/h and killed a French citizen, is also an ethnic Bulgarian.
Two and a half years after the death of 14-year-old Philip and more than 23 hearings, there has been no conviction for the man who ran him over on a pedestrian crossing in the center of Sofia at nearly 90 km/h and with over 2 per mille of alcohol in his blood. The case begins all over again…
Of Roma origin is 21-year-old Viktor Iliev, who at 163 km/h - in a 50 km/h speed limit - flew through the window of a bus in Sofia, killing a Syrian doctor on the spot and injuring four others. While driving, he inhaled nitrous oxide.
But the next one is again Bulgarian - or is it Turkish? Ethnicity does not matter, except to be instrumentalized on social networks.
The cases follow one after the other, and each previous one is quickly forgotten, overshadowed by a new tragedy. After each one, the same questions are asked: who is to blame, why are there so many deaths on Bulgaria's roads, why are the relatives desperate to seek justice for the lives lost.
Who is afraid of the law
It is unbelievable, but in fact Bulgaria is scoring a small victory in the war on the roads. Compared to 2019, for example, when the indicator for road accident victims was almost 98 per 1 million inhabitants, preliminary data for 2025 show 71 deaths per million. This is a decrease of nearly 28%.
Bulgaria is improving its results without leaving the bottom of the European ranking. Victims are decreasing, but not fast enough - and that is why Bulgaria is still a country in which the risk of dying on the road is among the highest in Europe. The average indicator for the European Union is 44 deaths per 1 million inhabitants. Denmark and Sweden remain the safest, with 24 and 20 victims per 1 million inhabitants, respectively.
With a very high number of police officers, prosecutors and judges, disproportionate to the declining population, the Bulgarian state should inspire fear of the law. But although it ranks first in the EU in court maintenance costs as a share of GDP - nearly 0.7%, justice in Bulgaria continues to produce a sense of impunity.
Where does this come from? After every serious crime, society learns that the perpetrators were already known to the police and the prosecutor's office. This is the case this time too.
"The persons who caused the accident are known to the Ministry of Interior and the prosecutor's office," said Deputy City Prosecutor Angel Kanev.
Usually law enforcement agencies have data. If they don't have one, then someone has stretched out an umbrella, the diameter of which is directly proportional to the extent of corruption.
Information has emerged that one or both drivers in the accident on "Chelopeshko Shosse" are connected to the so-called "Kalashnikov Gang" - a criminal group known to the police for activities such as racketeering and control of prostitution and beggars in Sofia. However, no one is in prison with a sentence.
After the accident, the perpetrators of the deadly incident even threatened the firefighters and rescuers that they would see what would happen to them because they told what they had seen - and even called their friends for backup. The two also turned out to have driver's licenses from the Czech Republic, which it is not known whether they are real. Georgi Semerdzhiev, for example, turned out to have a fake driver's license, allegedly issued by Switzerland.
If taxpayers pay police officers, investigators and prosecutors to be chroniclers of crime and to explain after another tragedy how well they knew the perpetrators, the problem is not the lack of information. The problem is the lack of consequences.
On BNT, the chairman of "Save Sofia" and Sofia municipal councilor Boris Bonev suggested that the Ministry of Interior check people with expensive cars, focusing on six neighborhoods in Sofia: Simeonovo, Dragalevtsi, Boyana, "Fakulteta", Filipovtsi and "Hristo Botev". Emphasizing that the problem is not ethnic, he commented that "90% of those who consider themselves to be self-forgetful scumbags, those who trample us on the streets, those who beat you if you look at them askance, live in these six neighborhoods".
Money leaves hot trails
In 1997, the Minister of the Interior in the "Kostov" cabinet, Bogomil Bonev, conducted an operation known as "Mosquito" - to search for stolen cars and collect unpaid taxes. Crime was not respected.
But if the police work together with the tax services, financial intelligence and the prosecutor's office, the effect will be different. The question is whether they are ready to check the origin of the money, expensive cars, fictitious companies, tax fraud and connections with criminal groups, regardless of the neighborhood and ethnic origin of their owners.
As acting Minister of Internal Affairs in 2022, Ivan Demerdzhiev revealed the "umbrella" over Semerdzhiev. Now he heads the Ministry of Internal Affairs in conditions of an absolute majority and can do much more.
Otherwise, every next murderer on the road will also be known to the police and the prosecutor's office.