On June 21st, 2019, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy was driving the wheel of a Dodge pickup when he killed 7 motorcyclists. And after a lengthy trial, a person loaded with controversy, he was acquitted on 7 charges of negligent murder in August of 2022.
Rapid forward to the current working day and Zhukovskyy and his attorneys have asked the condition of Massachusetts to reinstate his driver’s license following it was revoked during the demo. One thing which is horrified the victims’ family members, alongside with numerous other folks, and for good reason.
I will not be commenting on the demo, nor the verdict or any functions concerned in the protection or prosecution.
But I will say that based mostly on the historic evidence of Mr. Zhukovskyy’s driving history, which was offered at demo, it truly is my belief that he should really never ever be authorized to travel a auto once more. Nor should everyone with this kind of a listing of prior offenses.
Specific in an very infuriating timeline from local news outlet WMUR 9, Mr. Zhukovskyy was routinely associated in targeted visitors citations, arrests, and accidents that included medications, liquor, rushing, negligence, and other instances of driving whilst impaired. Involving 2012 and the time of the fatalities of those 7 motorcyclists, Mr. Zhukovskyy was associated in all over 7 other incidents, including a crash in Baytown, Texas, in which “Officers explained he was driving a Mack truck hauling a trailer with vehicles on an interstate when it flipped on its side right after hitting a guardrail.” He was not cited for the crash soon after proclaiming a auto minimize him off.
This incident was just 18 days ahead of the crash that’d just take those people motorcyclists’ life.
There have been other prior arrests and citations for driving below the affect, acquiring drug paraphernalia on him, and 1 guilty plea for “speeding, possessing drug paraphernalia, offering wrong details and driving with a suspended license” thanks to a prior DUI.
Through the demo, it arrived out that his license should’ve been revoked and that “Connecticut officers put info about [a prior different OUI] charge into a point out-to-condition computer system procedure. Not ample info was entered to immediately result in the suspension of his driver’s license, said Massachusetts officers, demanding a manual review of his standing as a driver in Massachusetts. As of June 23, the overview had not still been completed,” according to WMUR 9.
The head of the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Autos, Erin Deveny, resigned in the course of the demo right after the failure to revoke his license emerged. And the NTSB also produced a 1,300-website page report on the crash and its results.
Which provides us to currently and Mr. Zhukovskyy asking the courts to reinstate his driving privileges. I italicize privileges as driving is not a right. It is really not some thing that’s given to all Us residents or even all individuals all over the earth, and these privileges can, and ought to, be taken absent when another person willfully disregards other people’s lives.
I do not treatment what you do in the protection and security of your possess residence. Persons can, and do, drink and use recreational medications properly. But as before long as you just take that behavior out into the environment where by other individuals can be affected by your final decision-generating, that is when you get rid of those privileges. Other folks should not be affected by your decisions.
Dependent on Mr. Zhukovskyy’s prior decisions guiding the wheel, as perfectly as the state saying he should’ve had his license taken away thanks to a prior DUI in advance of that fateful working day, he definitely shouldn’t get his license again.
I you should not see why his acquittal of a different established of charges would adjust the result of that first revocation. Do you?