Zhukovskyy Found Not Guilty

By Barbara Tetreault
THE BERLIN SUN
LANCASTER — Volodymyr Zhukovskyy on Tuesday was found not guilty on all counts in his trial for the June 21, 2019, crash on Route 2 in Randolph that killed seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club.

Killed in the crash were Albert Mazza, 59, of Lee, Michael Ferazzi, 62, of Contoocook; Daniel Pereira, 58, of Riverside, Rhode Island; Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, both 58, of Lakeville, Mass.; Desma Oakes, 42, of Concord; and Aaron Perry, 45, of Farmington.

Zhukovsky, 26, of West Springfield, Mass., was driving a pickup truck with a flatbed trailer west on Route 2 when the truck collided with the group of Jarheads motorcyclists traveling east.

Zhukovskyy faced 15 charges of negligent homicide, manslaughter and reckless operation.

Closing arguments in the trial were heard Tuesday morning in Coos County Superior Court and the jury deliberated for three hours before coming back with the verdict.

A jury had to decide between competing views of the collision that killed the seven motorcyclists in one of the most horrific crashes in state history.

Defense attorney Jay Duguay said Zhukovskyy was not guilty of the charges and said the accident was the result of Jarhead President Albert Mazza driving drunk, with a blood alcohol level of .135, well over the legal limit of .08.

Duguay said the state rushed to judgement, charging the truck crossed the center line and struck the motorcyclists.

The attorney said eye witness testimony in the case was conflicting and contradicting, in part because the accident happened quickly and the scene was expansive.

“There were more than a dozen vehicles, seven deceased riders, several injured and others that were uninjured. There was debris all over the road and there were thousands of pieces of evidence to collect and document. To say it was a complex scene will be vastly understating,” Duguay said.

He said those factors were why scientific accident reconstruction is so vitally important in a case like this.

He said the N.H. State Police collision accident reconstruction team went to the scene and wrote a report but charged the state did not call the team as witnesses because their finding did not agree with the prosecution’s version.

“They came to erroneous conclusions about how the accident occurred within 24 hours of the accident, and didn’t even pretend to conduct an actual investigation,” Duguay charged.

The defense hired William Howerton of Scientific Boston, Inc. to do crash scene analysis, and Duguay pointed to the video simulation Howerton created for the jury. He said Howerton concluded that at the time of impact the truck was not over the center line or in the opposing lane. Rather, he said the cause of the collision was Mazza driving his motorcycle drunk, not looking where he was going, losing control of his bike, and sliding into the truck.

In order to find Zhukovskyy guilty of manslaughter and negligent homicide, Duguay said the jury had to find that he knowingly acted recklessly. He said the only evidence of that is a statement by the defendant that he had reached down to get a drink.

Duguay said that does not qualify as a gross deviation from what a reasonable person would do.

Finally, he reminded the jury that the burden of proof rests with the state. He argued the prosecution had failed to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt and they must find Zhukovskyy not guilty.

“It’s clear what happened here,” said N.H. Assistant Attorney Scott Chase, delivering the state’s closing statement. He said in the minutes before the accident, multiple witnesses testified Zhukovskyy was all over the road.

But Chase said the jury does not have to depend on the testimony of eyewitnesses about the defendant’s driving that day. He said Zhukovskyy admitted to being responsible for the crash in an interview with police.

“He was crystal clear from the beginning that he caused the crash,” Chase said.

The prosecutor pointed to an interview two days after the crash in which state police testified Zhukovskyy told them he had swerved to the left, crossing the center line into the path of Mazza’s motorcycle.

As a commercial truck driver, Chase said Zhukovskyy knew how important it was to be an attentive driver and to keep his truck in the road. But on June 21, 2019, he said the defendant was driving all over the road, disregarding the risk of driving-out-of-control. Just before the crash, Chase said there was testimony that the truck drifted into the eastbound lane, almost forcing a vehicle off the road.

Chase told the jury the state does not have to prove that Zhukovskyy caused the crash – only that he was a substantial factor in it.

He said jurors could believe Mazza was at fault but still find Zhukovskyy guilty if the jury belief his actions substantially contributed to it. But he said the evidence is clear that Zhukovskyy was at fault and should be found guilty.

Before closing arguments, Coos County Superior Court Justice Peter Bornstein rejected a motion from the defense to dismiss the 15 charges.

With the jury out, the defense argued the state had not proven its case and the charges should be dismissed.

Coos County Attorney John McCormick responded that the state had shown that the defendant’s motorcycle crossed the line.

Bornstein ruled the state had shown sufficient evidence. Earlier during the trial, Bornstein dismissed eight counts charging Zhukovskyy with being impaired at the time of the accident, ruling the state had not met the burden of proof.

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