The driver whose truck collided with members of a Marine Corps motorcycle club, killing seven of them, was high on drugs and reaching for a drink when he careened across a New Hampshire road.
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, was driving for Westfield Transport, which had hired him just three days before the accident on June 21. He has been charged with negligent homicide over the deaths of seven members of the ‘Jarheads Motorcycle Club,’ whose members are all either active or former U.S. Marines and their families. Three others were injured.
Documents from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and New Hampshire authorities showed that Zhukovskyy, a Ukranian national, was intoxicated on an unnamed substance at the time of the deadly crash, which also injured three.
It was stated that Zhukovskyy was reaching for a drink that was located on the passenger seat when he swerved his Dodge pickup truck into the oncoming lane. The documents also detail 24 violations of federal motor carrier safety regulations involving Zhukovskyy and the vehicle, only 14 of which resulted from the accident.
Zhukovskyy was first cited for a driving offense in April 2012, when he was 16 and without even a learner’s permit and was involved in a crash. He later accumulated driving violations and arrests in at least six states. He also spent three months in a residential rehabilitation program in Pennsylvania to deal with alcohol, cocaine, and heroin abuse.
He was uninjured in the June crash. He was arrested three days later and charged with seven counts of negligent homicide, to which he pleaded not guilty.
The arrest of Zhukovskyy, a resident of Massachusetts, sparked an investigation into the state’s Registry of Motor Vehicles when it was discovered that he had multiple past traffic and impairment infractions that should have resulted in the revocation his commercial driver’s license.
Acknowledging a “severe backlog,” a Massachusetts official said that Zhukovskyy should have been stripped of his commercial license weeks before the accident after he refused to take a chemical sobriety test in Connecticut.
The motorcyclists killed in the accident were Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, both 58; Michael Ferazzi, 62; Albert Mazza, 49; Daniel Pereira, 58; Aaron Perry, 45; and Desma Oakes, 42.
