A barman accused of trying to kill three children in his car by driving 'at speed' into oncoming traffic when he was 'emotionally' upset has been cleared of attempted murder.
Tancredo Bankhardt, 41, was said to have failed to secure seat belts around his young passengers before deliberately causing a serious collision involving multiple vehicles.
Several people were injured in the crash, including two of the children in the defendant’s Vauxhall Astra who suffered serious injuries.
Tancredo’s plan to ‘deliberately’ kill the children was thwarted because nobody died in the crash on the night of September 26 last year on the A146 road between Loddon and Hales in Norfolk, the prosecution claimed.
But a jury of ten men and two women acquitted him of three charges of attempted murder today, following a two-week trial.
They found him guilty of four other charges, however – three of causing serious injury by dangerous driving involving two of the children and a driver in another car, plus a separate charge of dangerous driving.
Tancredo slumped weeping in the glass-fronted dock at Norwich Crown Court as the verdicts were read out.
His half-sister Eliana Aureliana, 47, who was in the public gallery with other family members welcomed the verdicts.
She instead that the crash had happened because 'of the pressures he was under' and that he did not mean to harm the children.
Ms Aureliana who lives in London said: 'He is a good man and the jury realised this. He was painted as an evil man during the trial – but he is just a human being.
'If this trial had happened in Brazil, my brother would have been killed in prison. He would not have lasted one day due to the way he was portrayed.
'I am sad about the case but I am also relieved that it happened in the UK because he will have been protected in prison.'
Opening the trial last month, prosecutor Stephen Rose KC described how Brazilian Bankhardt had been ‘emotionally’ upset as he spent two hours driving up and down the A-road.
Tancredo Bankhardt, 41, was acquitted of the attempted murder of three children in his car by driving 'at speed' into oncoming traffic
He then accelerated up to 74mph and veered on to the wrong side of the 60mph route before smashing his blue Astra into the path of a red Honda SUV, driven by Lukasz Wawrzenlzyk, it was claimed.
A black Audi A5 driven by John Huggins behind the Honda was also involved in the collision.
One of the children in Bankhardt's car suffered serious wounds including a cut to a cheek, a bleed on the brain and a collapsed lung, while another had serious injuries to their head, back and a leg which was fractured.
Mr Wawrzenlzyk had been unable to avoid a collision, despite steering into a verge and ending up in a ditch, Mr Rose said.
He also suffered significant injuries, while Mr Huggins had injuries to his chest and abdomen.
Jurors heard that Tancredo had posted a selfie showing him in his car with the three children, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, shortly before the crash.
A woman, who also cannot be identified, gave evidence about messages and calls she received from the defendant that left her 'really scared'.
The barman was convicted by the jury of four other charges, including three of causing serious injury by dangerous driving
One message said: 'I hope God doesn't treat me badly up there… See you in the next life.'
In a call played in court, which was recorded on a dashcam, Tancredo said: 'I hope you are very happy from the very bottom of my heart. There's nothing to be done...'
He added in another conversation: 'Don't let me take the next step.'
But in another part of the dashcam audio, Tancredo could be hard denying that he intended to kill the children.
The woman called police, telling a 999 controller that Bankhardt was 'going out of control' and she feared he was going to kill himself and the children.
She informed officers who rushed to her home within minutes that she had no idea where he was when he was sending her the 'strange messages'.
The woman, who sat behind a screen in court, wept as she told jurors: 'I didn't realise to be honest that this was going to happen. I tried to put something for the police to act.'
Tancredo's last call was to his brother, Arnaldo, at 8.26pm.
The dashcam audio recorded him saying 'I was only driving around to clear my head up' shortly before a 'bang' was heard.
Mr Rose told the court that Bankhardt, of Great Yarmouth, had fastened the seatbelts in the car by placing them into their buckles and then sitting the children on top so they were not secured.
'The prosecution say it points firmly into the direction that their seat belts were not meant to be doing their job that night,’ he said.
'Mercifully, whilst serious injuries were caused in the collision, thankfully no lives were lost. But a number of people involved received significant injuries.'
But Bankhardt, who suffered significant leg injuries himself, gave a statement to police in which he insisted the crash was not intentional and he would never deliberately hurt himself or anyone else.
He declared in the statement: ‘I love myself [and would] never hurt myself [or anyone else].’
Asked in court by his defence barrister ‘Is all that true?’, he said: ‘Yes.’
The defendant also insisted he had ‘no reason’ to kill the children.
A forensic vehicle examiner found no mechanical defects with the car or any reason for the driver losing control, jurors heard.
Footage on Bankhardt's dashcam also showed him putting on the main beam of his headlights as he approached the other cars involved, leading to the other drivers both flashing him.
Mrs Justice Eady asked for pre-sentence reports to be carried out on him and for updated medical information about the children before his sentencing on Thursday.
She gave no indication today about the sentence she would be imposing on Bankhardt, who has been in custody since the crash happened.