The judge told Sebastian M. that his high-speed “experiment” on a public highway “ended in tragedy for an entire family of three.” A Polish driver who killed a couple and their five-year-old child while driving at over 315 km/h has been handed the maximum of eight years in prison. Sebastian M., who was also banned from driving for 15 years, will be eligible for parole after six years. The couple and their son were killed when Sebastian M. lost control of his BMW on the A1 highway in September 2023 and hit their Kia passenger car, which burst into flames. The judge in the case said the driver was “testing the maximum speed he could achieve” in the “specially tuned” car, calling it an “experiment” that should not have been carried out on a public highway. His sentence was the maximum permissible under Polish law for the crime of which he was tried, namely causing a fatal road traffic accident. The families of his victims had appealed for the case to be tried in a higher court on charges of triple homicide, but a judge rejected the motion. Prosecutor Aleksander Duda said he would have asked for 20 or 30 years if the law had allowed it, adding that "the state does not have a punishment that fully corresponds to the weight of this tragedy." Millions in compensation In addition to the custodial sentence and driving ban, Sebastian M., whose surname has been withheld under Polish privacy laws, was also ordered to pay damages of half a million złoty (€114,000) to the parents of each of the two adults killed in the crash, as well as to the brother of one of the victims, bringing the total compensation to 2.5 million złoty (€570,000). "Using a public road instead of a Formula 1 track designated for such experiments, the defendant was testing the maximum speed he could achieve in a BMW that had been specially tuned," Judge Renata Folkman said as she sentenced Sebastian M. "Nobody knows how many such experiments the defendant had previously managed to carry out successfully, aside from the one that was revealed, which ended in tragedy for an entire family of three," the judge continued. Sebastian M. was not arrested immediately after the accident in 2023 and subsequently traveled to the United Arab Emirates, where he was arrested under an Interpol Red Notice in May 2025 and extradited to Poland to face trial. The trial began in October last year and has been closely followed by Polish media.
