Lawyer: Motorcyclist at Fault in Crash That Killed 7 Bikers

Truck driver was charged in June New Hampshire crash
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Mar 31, 2020 6:28 PM CDT
Lawyer: Motorcyclist at Fault in Crash That Killed 7 Bikers
In this June 24, 2019, file photo, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, of West Springfield, Mass., stands during his arraignment in district court in Springfield, Mass.   (Don Treeger/The Republican via AP, Pool, File)

One of the motorcyclists in a crash that killed him and six fellow bikers on a north woods New Hampshire highway was drunk and actually was the one who hit a pickup and caused the accident, the lawyer for the truck driver charged with homicide said in a document made public Tuesday. A New Hampshire State Police account of the June 21 crash in the community of Randolph “was deeply flawed," the lawyer for truck driver Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 24, of West Springfield, Massachusetts, said in a motion filed Friday that seeks a hearing to set him free on bail. State police initially determined that the flatbed trailer he was hauling was 1 1/2 feet over the center line at the time of impact, the motion said. But the state recently disclosed a report from an independent accident reconstruction firm that challenges that assessment, according to the motion filed by defense lawyer Jay Duguay.

Zhukovskyy's vehicle was traveling west and the motorcyclists were traveling east on the two-lane road. Crash Labs “determined that the impact occurred directly over the center line" and that the motorcycle driven by Albert “Woody" Mazza Jr. “was in fact protruding over onto the center line when it struck the truck," according to the motion. The initial impact occurred between the left side of Mazza's motorcycle and the left front tire of Zhukovskyy’s truck, it said, per the AP. The report goes on to say that “the impact caused catastrophic air loss to the left front tire of the truck, which left a tire mark on the center line of the road," Duguay says in his motion. "This tire mark had initially been attributed to an ‘unsuccessful avoidance maneuver' by Mr. Mazza, a position that the State has since retracted." The motion notes the state also provided information showing that Mazza had been turned around looking back at the group of riders behind him just before the accident and that autopsy reports show that at the time of the crash, Mazza's blood-alcohol level was 0.135%, well above the legal limit of 0.08%. (More of the latest here.)

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