Bogatic: two young men killed in collision, municipality declares day of mourning
In a collision of two cars near Bogatic on Friday evening, E. L. (19) from Klenje and P. D. (19) from Petlovaca were killed; two others are in a serious condition at Sabac hospital.
Two nineteen-year-old young men were killed in a serious traffic accident in Bogatic shortly before 11pm on Friday 23 May, according to a statement by the Municipality of Bogatic. The victims were E. L. from Klenje and P. D. from Petlovaca; two others, with serious bodily injuries, were taken to the General Hospital in Sabac, where their condition is, according to the latest information, being monitored in an intensive-care unit.
The collision of the two passenger cars took place on a stretch of road in Bogatic in the evening. According to the municipality, one vehicle ended up in a ditch beside the road and the other was badly damaged, requiring members of the Emergency Situations Sector to use hydraulic shears to extract the bodies. The precise circumstances of the collision will be established only after the on-site investigation has been completed.
The Municipality of Bogatic declared Monday 25 May a day of mourning for the deaths of two final-year pupils of the Macva Secondary School. The municipal statement said that public events and sporting fixtures would be cancelled as a mark of respect, and that flags would fly at half-mast on local-government buildings.
The director of the Macva Secondary School, who is not named in the municipal statement, told the media that the school had suffered a great loss and that psychological support would be available to pupils and teachers throughout the following week. The school-leavers’ celebration, scheduled for the coming days, will be postponed.
Traffic police from the Sabac Police Administration are conducting the on-site investigation and reviewing footage from road-monitoring cameras in the area. According to informal information from the police, one of the possible causes is excessive speed, but the official finding will be established only after an examination of the marks at the scene and an analysis of the damage pattern.
Under the Road Traffic Safety Act, if it is established that the accident was caused by a gross violation of regulations by one of the participants who died, no criminal proceedings are initiated ex officio, as they are extinguished by the death of the offender. In any case, the Road Safety Agency says, the data from this investigation will be entered into the national database on the causes of fatalities among young drivers.
According to 2024 data from the Road Safety Agency, young drivers aged between eighteen and twenty-four account for around ten per cent of all road users in Serbia, but almost a third of those killed in road collisions. The statistics confirm, the agency says, that mortality in this group remains significantly higher than the average.
The next procedural step is the submission of the traffic expert’s findings to the Basic Public Prosecutor’s Office in Sabac, which will decide on any criminal complaint. The competent prosecutor’s office had not issued a statement on the case at the time of writing.
