A devastated family and citizens seeking justice. This is the scene in Burgas hours before the court is to review the detention measure for Nikola Burgazliev, the son of a police officer, who on August 14 ran over six pedestrians with an ATV in Sunny Beach. Among the victims are 35-year-old Hristina Zdravkova and her four-year-old son, Martin, whose condition remains extremely serious.
Despite all the efforts of the medical teams, the young woman has already been declared brain dead, and doctors are simply waiting for the moment her heart stops. Hristina's mother, Zlatka Sokolova, talks about the tragedy and grief she is experiencing.
"My daughter is in a very serious condition. The doctors said there is no chance of survival. There isn't. There just isn't. The people did everything they could. But the impact was very hard, very brutal", she shares.
Tears well up in the eyes of the mother, who can't accept what happened. "How do we explain to my daughter's other child that his mother will never come back? Who will send him off on his first day of school?" she asks, referring to Hristina's nine-year-old son, who witnessed the horrifying incident but fortunately was not harmed.
The condition of four-year-old Martin, who along with his mother was crushed by the electric ATV, also remains critical.
"The child is also still in the hospital – he is not responsive, he is not awake. His condition has also been very serious for the eighth day now", explains Zlatka Sokolova. Little Martin, although conscious, is not responsive and is on life support. "Marti wiggles his little hand from time to time, but he hasn't woken up yet", the woman adds with hope in her voice as she fights with the cruel reality.
Her brother, Svetoslav Sokolov, also talks about his sister's death and doesn't hide his grief.
"The doctors are simply waiting for the moment when her heart will stop responding to the medications and the worst will happen for my sister – death. They don't give a timeframe, but they told me that this will definitely be the outcome", he is quoted as saying.
The tragic incident happened after Nikola Burgazliev, in an attempt to avoid a collision with an oncoming car, swerved the electric ATV to the right. Going up on the sidewalk, he hit the pedestrians, which besides Hristina and Martin, included Miroslav's two nieces, aged 6 and 12, as well as a 49-year-old employee from a nearby hotel. The children's father shares that they are physically fine, but the incident has left deep psychological scars.
Tension is escalating among the victims' relatives and the public. At the protest held before the court hearing, Yordan Sokolov, Hristina's father, states:
"He should not be under house arrest, to me he is simply a terrorist. To plow into a crowd, to kill people, that is something terrible".
A crowd seeking retribution has gathered at the scene of the incident and in front of the court in Burgas. The protesters want "Nikola Burgazliev to leave in handcuffs and not because we want a lynching, but we want the measure taken to be reciprocal".
The family's lawyer in turn stated that they will seek a charge of intent. According to him, this would lead to a sentence of between 15 and 20 years in prison or even life imprisonment, and this will be their insistent demand before the court.
The declared brain death, officially announced as a state of death, leads to the termination of all life support systems, which makes the tragedy even more brutal and irreversible for Hristina's family.