CONCORD, N.H. — The driver of a pickup truck in a fiery collision on a rural New Hampshire highway that killed seven motorcyclists was charged Monday with seven counts of negligent homicide, and records show he was stopped on suspicion of drunken driving last month and in 2013.
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, was arrested Monday morning at his home in West Springfield, Mass., the New Hampshire attorney general’s office said. He will be arraigned Tuesday in Lancaster, N.H., authorities said.
He was handed over to New Hampshire authorities after a brief court appearance Monday in Springfield, Mass. Zhukovskyy looked down at his feet as he was led into the courtroom with his hands cuffed behind his back.
Connecticut prosecutors say he was arrested May 11 in an East Windsor Walmart parking lot after failing a sobriety test. Officers had responded to a complaint about a man who was revving his truck engine and jumping up and down outside the vehicle.
Zhukovskyy’s lawyer in that case, John O’Brien, said he denies being intoxicated and will fight the charge. Zhukovskyy refused to submit to a blood test, prosecutors said.
Additionally, Zhukovskyy was arrested on a drunken driving charge in 2013 in Westfield, Mass., state motor vehicle records show. He was placed on probation for one year and had his license suspended for 210 days, The Westfield News reported.
Records from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration indicate that the company Zhukovskyy was driving for, Westfield Transport, has been cited for various violations in the last two years, MassLive.com reported .
There were two instances where drivers were in possession of narcotic drugs. Other violations including a driver without a commercial driver’s license, one for speeding and another for defective brakes.
The company did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
A man who answered the phone at the home of Zhukovskyy’s family and would identify himself only as his brother-in-law said Monday that the family is in shock and feeling the same pain as everyone else but couldn’t say whether the driver was right or wrong.
Since the accident, the brother-in-law said, Zhukovskyy had remained in his room, not eaten and talked to no one.
Defense attorney Donald Frank called Friday’s crash a “tragedy” but said it’s important to let the criminal justice system play out.
Zhukovskyy’s pickup truck, towing a flatbed trailer, collided with a group of 10 motorcycles Friday on a two-lane highway in the northern New Hampshire community of Randolph, investigators said. The truck was traveling west when it struck the eastbound group of motorcycles.
The victims were members or supporters of the Marine JarHeads, a New England motorcycle club that includes Marines and their spouses, and ranged in age from 42 to 62. Four were from New Hampshire, two from Massachusetts and one from Rhode Island.
George Loring, a JarHeads member who lives in Hingham, Mass., and was a few hundred yards from the crash, said Zhukovskyy has “got to live with it for the rest of his life.”
“Everyone’s suffering so much,” Loring said. “It’s so sad for the brothers and sisters who died. You can be angry at him, you can be whatever. I don’t know. I’m glad he’s been arrested.”
Joseph Mazza, whose nephew Albert Mazza Jr. was killed in the crash, welcomed the arrest but called it a poor consolation for the loss of a loved one.
