Two eye-witnesses of Diogo Jota crash refute Spanish police claims about tragedy
A second witness has come forward to refute Spanish police claims Liverpool star Diogo Jota appeared to be speeding when he crashed his Lamborghini supercar. Traffic cops in Zamora near Spain's north-west border with Portugal said on Tuesday everything was pointing to the dad-of-three driving and possibly doing well above the 120kph (74mph) speed limit after revealing they believed the acid green £180,000 Lamborghini Huracan had suffered a tyre blowout.
On Wednesday, a Portuguese lorry driver claiming to be the trucker who filmed Jota's car in flames on the A-52 in Cernadilla near Zamora insisted the vehicle passed him 'super calmly' and 'without speeding.' Jose Azevedo also said in a selfie video he grabbed a fire extinguisher and tried to help but there was 'nothing' he could do to save the Liverpool winger and his footballer brother Andre Silva who also died in last Thursday's crash.
Today a trucker named locally as Jose Aleixo Duarte told Portuguese tabloid Correio da Manha he was overtaken by Jota's car five minutes before the accident and it was going at a 'moderate speed.' He also slammed the road conditions where the fatal crash occurred, saying it was in a 'bad state.'
Mr Azevedo became the first person to come forward as an eye-witness yesterday and identify himself as the author of footage that went viral last week showing Diogo Jota's car in flames. He said in a daytime selfie video shot from his lorry cab justifying his decision to speak out.
'There's a video on the Internet, on TV, of Diogo Jota's car on fire at night,' Mr Azevedo said. 'Supposedly it was a lorry driver who filmed it and didn't provide first aid. Well, that lorry driver was me. I filmed it and I have proof of it.'
During the four-minute video he turned his mobile phone towards his name on his lorry tachograph, which matched the name on the HGV dashboard tachograph in the night-time footage of Jota's burning supercar. Both sets of footage also show a slightly cracked windscreen which Mr Azevedo offered up as more proof he was telling the truth about seeing the crash.
He said: 'I stopped, grabbed the fire extinguisher and tried to help. Because of the impact of the accident - forget it - there was nothing I could do. Nothing, absolutely nothing!
'As for the family, my condolences, my sincere feelings. I have a clear conscience, I know what I saw. They passed me super calmly, without speeding, without speeding.'
Making no mention of going to the police after witnessing the crash, Mr Azevedo said: 'I didn't even know who was in the Lamborghini that day. I only found out the next day because, when I arrived at my destination, I shared the video with my wife, and in the morning I learnt that it was the brothers in the car.
'You have my word that they weren't speeding. They were going super-calmly. I drive this road every day, from Monday to Saturday, and I know what it's like: it's not worth s***.
'It's a dark road and I could see the make of the car, the colour of the car, everything. I filmed it, I stopped, I tried to help, but unfortunately there was nothing I could do. My conscience is clear.'
He admitted he had 'thought twice' about going public but said he had been spurred into doing so by 'internet haters' who were claiming he had done nothing to assist Diogo or his brother and had only posted footage of their burning Lamborghini for "likes."
He spoke out just hours after Spanish newspaper El Mundo claimed Spanish police were still trying to identify or locate crash eye-witnesses including the person behind the viral video of the footballers' Lamborghini in flames. In only their second official statement since last week's horror crash, the Civil Guard said on Tuesday: 'The expert report is still being worked on and finalised.
'Among other things traffic police from the Zamora branch of the Civil Guard are studying the tread marked by one of the wheels of the vehicle. Everything is also pointing to a possible high excess of speed over the permitted speed on that stretch of the motorway.
'All the tests carried out for the moment point to the driver of the crash vehicle being Diogo Jota. The expert police report when it is finalised will be handed over to a court in Puebla de Sanabria.'
The force said the same day of the 12.30am crash 'Everything is pointing to a tyre blowout as the car was overtaking. As a result of the accident, the car caught fire and both occupants died.'
Spanish road safety expert Javier Lopez Delgado has pointed the finger at 'multiple factors' including the driving speed, saying: 'If they had been going at 55mph they probably wouldn't have been killed. It seems very clear they were going very fast because of the skid marks.'
Mr Lopez Delgado, president of the Spanish Association of Road Safety Auditors (ASEVI), also said he believed the road surface had been a contributing factor to the men's deaths, insisting: 'You can clearly see it had many faults.'
In comments to local paper La Opinion de Zamora earlier this week, the expert engineer said a tyre blowout he linked to the tyre not being in the 'right conditions or having the correct pressure', wouldn't be the only factor in the crash. He told La Opinion de Zamora the central reservation barrier the siblings crashed into acted as an 'obstacle' because 'the length and angle of incidence were not correct.'
Referencing another accident in the same spot eight days earlier in which a 60-year-old woman was severely injured and had to be cut free from the wreckage of her vehicle by firefighters, Mr Lopez Delgado said: 'It could be a coincidence but I'm not a big believer in coincidences. When two different cars come off the road at the same kilometre point something's up.'
Diogo Jota was heading to the northern Spanish port city of Santander with his brother to catch a ferry to the UK and carry on to Liverpool by car after being advised not to travel by plane following lung surgery. He had married his childhood sweetheart Rute Cardoso, mum to their three young children, on June 22.
The siblings' funerals took place on Saturday at a church in their hometown of Gondomar near Porto. Several Liverpool players and Diogo's Portugal teammates were among those who attended after paying their last respects at a wake the previous day.
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