2 German speeders receive life sentence for causing fatal crash

Two speeders received a life sentence for murder after causing a fatal accident with an uninvolved driver during a high-speed crash in Berlin, the responsible regional court in Berlin announced on Tuesday.

"The defendants have played with the lives of other people for no reason," said the presiding judge at the Berlin regional court, Matthias Schertz. "What happened had nothing to do with negligence," added Schertz.

In an illegal street race on Berlin's highly frequented Kurfuerstendamm and Tauentzienstrasse in 2016, the two men had been driving at excessive speeds of over 170 kilometers per hour and were running red traffic lights.

The German court stated that the two men "deliberately accepted the death of other traffic participants".

During the race, the car of one of the defendants collided with the vehicle of an uninvolved man who died at the scene of the accident. After the collision, the scene of the accident had looked "like a terrorist attack", commented presiding judge Schertz.

The case had been renegotiated at the Berlin regional court after the Federal Court of Justice (BGH), Germany's highest court, had overturned an earlier verdict due to insufficient proof of the defendants' intentions.

In the earlier verdict from 2017 that was found valid on Tuesday, the two defendants had already received life sentences by the Berlin regional court for causing the fatal accident. It was the first time in Germany that participants of an illegal car race were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder.

"Today's verdict is not yet final," the court announced and German media reported that the attorney of one of the defendants announced to have already filed an appeal against the verdict. In this case, Germany's highest court, the BGH, will once again have to deal with the two speeders for a final decision.