Seven motorcyclists were killed in a crash five years ago. On Wednesday, family and friends of the truck driver asked New Hampshire officials not to let him back on the state’s roads.
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy was found not guilty of multiple counts of manslaughter and negligent homicide in the June 21, 2019, accident in Randolph that killed seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, a group in New England for Marine Corps veterans and their wives.
In May, an administrative law judge for the Department of Safety said that Zhukovskyy’s license could be taken away for up to seven years because of a law in the state. The hearing on Wednesday was to decide how long the license suspension would last. A decision is due in 15 days.
The state wants Zhukovskyy’s license to be taken away until 2031. The trucker’s lawyer wants the ban to end right away by moving the start date back to 2019 and skipping the last two years of the maximum sentence for good behavior.
The meeting on Wednesday was mostly made up of people who knew the people who died or rode with them that day. They talked about how terrible it was to lose parents and close friends, and they told Zhukovskyy he couldn’t get his license back. Many people pointed out that he had been in a number of accidents and traffic violations before the 2019 crash.
David Bark of the Jarheads said, “Someone who caused so much terrible pain to so many people has the nerve to say, ‘I want my privilege back.'” “Being able to drive a car on a public access highway is not protect by the Constitution.” It’s an honor to be here.
Dawn Brindley was riding with the bikers when the accident happened. She was one of many people who blamed Zhukovskyy for it, even though he was later found not guilty. She talked about “seeing bodies on fire and pieces of my friends scattered on the road” and how Zhukovskyy had left a scar on her that would never go away.
She told him, “You don’t deserve to drive any kind of car in my state of New Hampshire.” “You don’t deserve to be free while the families and loved ones of the people who died that day talk about the horrible memories.”
David Hilts, who was speaking for the state, pushed for the longest suspension possible, pointing out Zhukovskyy’s past of accidents and traffic violations.
It’s clear that travelers in New Hampshire would be safer if Mr. Zhukovskyy’s nonresident operating license was taken away for as long as the law allows, and they should be kept safe as much as possible, Hilts said.
By video, Zhukovsky and his lawyer spoke to the families and friends of the crash victims and said they had his “deepest condolences.” He also said he had been sober for five years. “Right now I don’t do drugs.” I don’t smoke or drink. He said, “You know, I live a good, healthy life.”
His lawyer, Earle Wingate III, asked that the hearing about the length of the ban “not be based on emotion, but on facts.”
After Zhukovskyy was arrested in New Hampshire after the crash, his Massachusetts license was automatically taken away. He is now trying to get it back.
At his trial, the prosecutors said Zhukovskyy swerved back and forth a lot before the accident and told cops he was at fault.
Zhukovskyy’s license should have been taken away at that time because he had been caught in Connecticut in May 2019 for drunk driving. The Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles was told by officials in Connecticut, but Zhukovskyy’s license wasn’t taken away because of a backlog of notices from other states about driving offenses. The case in Connecticut is still going on.
In 2022, Zhukovskyy was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He had come to the U.S. from Ukraine as a child and had permanent residency. Last year, a judge told him to go back to Ukraine, but because of the war with Russia, the U.S. has stopped flights to bring him back and given qualifying Ukrainians Temporary Protected Status.
