A Social Security (CSS) official has been charged with injury offenses after being involved in a serious traffic incident in which a person was repeatedly run over. Lawyer José Antonio Moncada described the episode as an alarming example of irresponsibility and contempt for human life. The accused, identified as Antonio González Ramírez, allegedly a CSS driver, caused a triple collision and ran over the victim, Edwin Anet Sánchez, who was thrown against a wall on more than one occasion, according to the victim's legal defense version. Moncada warned that this type of behavior adds to a worrying statistic of drivers who evade their criminal and civil responsibility, protected by a system that does not penalize hit-and-runs according to the permanent damage they cause to victims. “Plea agreements are often negotiated behind the backs of those who suffer the consequences, when they should be an active part of the process,” the jurist stated. The lawyer was emphatic in pointing out that the Public Prosecutor's Office performs an investigative role, but the victim is a procedural subject whose rights are frequently relegated, which in his opinion weakens the mission of justice. Sánchez presents about twenty injuries, including fractures and wounds, and was urgently transferred by ambulance to the San Miguel Arcángel Hospital, where he remains in recovery, without having yet overcome the physical and emotional sequelae of the event. “Here hunger meets the desire to eat. On the one hand, the CSS as the employer of the person who starred in an act of indifferent savagery, and on the other, an insurance company with a history of minimizing or evading responsibilities,” he said referring to the company FEDPA. The case puts a magnifying glass on the legal treatment of traffic crimes in Panama and reopens the debate on the real protection of victims against behaviors that leave irreversible damage. This was not a simple accident: there were consequences that are not erased with an agreement.
