The trial of a truck driver who was accused of causing the deaths of multiple motorcyclists in a Randolph New Hampshire crash has begun.
The crash happened on 21 June 2019, and involved the driver of a 2016 Dodge pickup truck colliding with a group of seven bikers, according to Ride Apart.
The truck was driven by Volodymr Zhukovskyy, 26 from West Springfield, Massachusetts, and he hit seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, including the MC’s leader, Albert Mazza. For Zhukovskyy, the result has been a charge of negligent homicide.
CBS News reports that the Jarheads MC was made up of ex-US Marine Corps veterans and their spouses.
Additionally, CBS reports that the trial had been delayed, partly for the pandemic, and partly for the request of the defence team to have additional time to find an appropriate expert in crash reconstruction.
Ride Apart reports that the defence originally planned to approach the case from the angle that Mazza had been riding impaired, and that that was the cause of the crash.
That continues to be the line of the defence, despite a report in December 2020 from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in the US that said the defence’s argument was untrue.
Ride Apart reports that the Chairman of the NTSB said in December 2020: “The National Transportation Safety Board determines that the probable cause of the Randolph New Hampshire crash was the pickup truck driver’s crossing the centre line and encroaching into the oncoming lane of travel which likely occurred because of his impairment from the use of multiple drugs.”
Those drugs, according to CBS News, were heroin and cocaine, which Zhukovskyy admitted to using to the police upon questioning.
On the part of the bikers, CBS News reports that federal investigators in the US found that some of the bikers and their passengers were impaired by alcohol. However, it was concluded by the investigators that this was not the cause of the crash.
Zhukovskyy, who was also arrested in Connecticut for drunk-driving two months before the New Hampshire crash, was driving at the time, CBS News reports, for Westfield Transport.
The company is now disbanded but was run by two brothers who were accused of falsifying records. The brothers’ cases are pending in federal court, and they have both pleaded not guilty.
Lead image courtesy of Steven Senne/AP.
