Brno, May 31 (CTK) – A police officer was driving the super-modern BMW i8 car during the accident in south Moravia on Monday evening, the police and emergency service said today, denying the media information about Vladimir Krulis, deputy head of the Presidential Office Protocol, driving the car.
The hybrid car worth four million crowns, which the police have borrowed for testing, drove into a brook on the outskirts of Brno after its driver suffered a stroke and lost control of it.
Krulis, 35, who accompanies President Milos Zeman during his tour of the South Moravia Region, which ends today, was on the passenger seat. Both Krulis and the driver were sent to hospital with injuries.
“The policeman who was diagnosed with a stroke was driving. The passenger called the emergency service. We transported him to a trauma centre with a suspected spinal injury,” Hedvika Kropackova, spokeswoman for the South Moravia emergency service, told CTK.
Krulis broke two vertebrae, but his spinal cord was not harmed, Zeman said today.
The police also insist on Krulis not having been at the wheel.
“A police officer was driving the car as we said in our statement,” South Moravian police spokeswoman Stepanka Komarova told CTK.
It was not possible to apply a breathalyser test because of the driver’s injuries so his blood sample was taken for analysis, she said. “This is a standard procedure in the case of a road accident,” Komarova said.
The General Inspection of Security Corps (GIBS) is investigating the accident.
Komarova previously said the police had offered to show their equipment after the Monday official programme of Zeman’s visit.
Only members of the security forces, the Interior Ministry’s employees or persons whose transport is connected with the fulfilment of their professional duties can use a police car, police command spokeswoman Ivana Nguyenova said earlier.
However, she did not directly say whether Krulis had been in the car rightfully.
The car, which the police received for testing in the first half of May, was to be primarily used to fight road pirates on motorways and high-speed roads in South Moravia. The police have borrowed the car from the Invelt firm for six months or until it covers 20,000 kilometres.
($1=23.690 crowns)
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