Court raises Oud Gastel crash sentence to 6 years 8 months

The court of appeal in Den Bosch has increased the prison sentence for Omar E., a 31-year-old from Roosendaal, to six years and eight months. He caused a crash in Oud Gastel in September 2022 in which four people died. The district court had given him four years.

The court also gave him a driving ban of ten years, the longest possible. It imposed the longer prison sentence because it found "meerdaadse samenloop" (multiple offences). In short, it weighs the deaths of four people more heavily against him.

The dead were two mothers and two children. Another child in the car survived. Omar E. was driving a rented Mercedes at more than 150 km/h on a road with a 50 km/h limit.

He admits he was speeding. But he argues the woman driving the other car should have let him pass, because he was on a priority road. The court of appeal, like the district court before it, rejected that and ruled that his dangerous driving caused the crash. The court said he has not taken responsibility. Anyone who sees it differently, it said, shows "a fundamental lack of insight or a denial in the face of the evidence".

The court said he caused the survivor and all the bereaved "indescribable suffering".