Near Cesis, a car ran over a man lying on the roadside. This is not the first case of someone lying on the roadway 0 9

Local residents report that drunken locals staggering along the road are not uncommon, and the deceased may have been one of them.

The driver of the BMW was traveling on the Liepa–Smiltene highway. Near the village of Marsnieni, in the dark, he ran over a man who was lying right in the middle of the road. The man died on the spot from the impact.

Local residents recall seeing emergency service flashing lights from their windows that evening: “I saw the lights flashing. I didn’t go to see for myself.”

According to the police, the deceased was a 61-year-old man. Locals do not yet know who he was, but the circumstances of the incident seem familiar to them. Drunken "brothers of the bottle" often wander along the roads here, and this was likely one of them:

“He has plenty of friends. There’s one living in that house, always staggering like that. But I haven’t seen him drink that much. No money, but they want to drink. What can you say — should I hit them? You yell at them — they still don’t listen.”

A woman named Vija recounts that her husband is also part of the group of "friends" who walk unsafely in the evenings. Relatives, upon hearing about the tragedy, immediately called her to check if her husband was okay.

“Relatives called. Ours sometimes wanders with that company too, but yesterday, to my surprise, he was home. Apparently, he had already had his fill in the previous days,” Vija says.

This is not the first case of a person being found lying on a local road. A few years ago, a man in a state of intoxication was noticed on the roadside and taken to Smiltene Hospital — back then, he simply had frostbite but survived.

As for the current tragic case, it is still unclear whether the man was drunk or if he fell ill. It is only known that the BMW driver was sober. The State Police continues to investigate the circumstances as part of a criminal process.