“No penalty will bring life to David”, who tragically died after hanging from a goal without counterweights. Teacher “should have acted with fixing the goal, in order to avoid the fall”, says judge from Leiria.
The Leiria Court sentenced a teacher this Friday to a suspended sentence of one year and two months for a crime of negligent homicidefor the death of a student due to the fall of a goal at a school in that city.
The professor was accused by the Public Prosecutor of a crime of homicide due to gross negligence, but the judge understood that the facts did not correspond to this more serious crime and made a non-substantial change to the facts.
The man was tried following the death of a 15-year-old student due to the fall of a goal, on May 25, 2021, in the physical education class of a 9th year class, on the synthetic turf football field at Colégio Conciliar de Maria Imaculada (CCMI), in Leiria.
“I apply a penalty below the expected averagewhich will be suspended for the same period, without any probationary period. No sentence will bring David back to life and no sentence will bring more suffering to the defendant than what he suffered that day”, said the judge, recognizing that the accused “was emotionally devastated” with what happened. The penalty aims to “reestablish a certain social peace and sentimental peace for those who were involved in this”, he added.
For the court it was proven that, despite having alerted the school and the football academy to the lack of counterweights and reminding students not to hang on the goals, the teacher used the equipment without counterweights.
However, “warning does not eliminate the riskgiven the ages with whom I was dealing. On this day he made it easier, not accepting that the goal could fall on the student and cause his death. It was up to you to make the decision regarding the use of the goal on that day and in those circumstances”, stated the judge.
“I should have acted with the fixing of the goal, in order to avoid the fall. The failure to fulfill the duties to which the defendant, as a teacher, was subject should have foreseen the consequences. By not doing so, the risk of an accident and consequences significantly increased, as happened,” he highlighted.
When reading the sentence, the judge acknowledged that previously other students had already hung from the goal without counterweights, “without falls or injuries”, but reinforced that the teacher was aware of the danger, as was justified by the constant alerts to the institutions, and chose to use the aforementioned goal anyway.
It was not proven that the teacher’s conduct “was the direct cause of the young man’s death” nor that “counterweights existed on that day or were accessible to the teacher”.
“If there is this concern on the part of the defendant, it would not make sense to have counterweights and not have used them”, he added.
Director, accused, was dismissed
The judge made a point of clarifying that the trial was only about determining the responsibility of the teacher and not anyone else, stating that the director of the CCMI was dismissed in the instruction phase and the president of the football academy was a witness in the process. The director was also initially accused by the MP of the crime of negligent homicide, but the criminal investigation judge decided not to take her to trial.
How it all happened
The MP’s accusation states that, at 4:50 pm, one of the groups “was playing handball next to” one of the goals.
“One of the students positioned himself in the goal, instead of the goalkeeper, and the other three exchanged the ball among themselves so they could shoot until a goal was scored.”
“It was at this point, and because they had just scored a goal, that they changed goalkeepers”, states the order, describing that, following that change, the victim “ran towards the goal” and “hung on the top post”.
Immediately, the student was “projected forward, along with the goal, falling to the ground, face down, with the goal falling on top of him, hitting him in the head area”.
Although first aid was “immediately provided, with the intervention” of the teacher, and “emergency aids were activated”, the student died at 5:44 pm in Leiria hospital.
