Chaim Biton, driver of the 402 bus from Yerushalayim to Bnei Brak which crashed into a parked truck in February 2016, causing the death of six passengers and severe injury of another, was sentenced to four years’ imprisonment. He also got a one year suspended sentence and was ordered to pay $22,500 compensation to the families whose lives he ruined. Families of the six deceased victims will receive $3,400 apiece. Sara Sperling, the injured woman who married in November after a delay of eight months, will get $2,250. Biton’s regular driving license was suspended for fifteen years and he was disqualified from driving heavy vehicles forever.
“I don’t know how much abundance and how much light I cut off from this world by killing people in this life,” Biton said. “I am sorry. I hope that G-d willing, whatever Hashem does is for the good.”
Families complained about the miniscule compensation.
“They’re making a laughing stock of us; why such a tiny sum?” one mother complained.
“Perhaps we won’t take the money at all due to his financial position,” she said. “It adds nothing to us and won’t even be noticed. He is paying the compensation in fifty installments; how much is that? A few hundred shekels a month. We won’t even notice it.”
But Justice Yehoshua Zimmerman of the Yerushalayim Shalom Court argued that forcing Biton to pay more compensation would lead to his financial ruin.
Biton, who has married since the crash and has a baby son, asked for a few months’ delay of the sentence so that he could spend more time with his infant son. He was convicted in the past for a 2014 crash caused by reckless driving which left eighteen people injured.
{Matzav.com Israel news Bureau}
