Seven dead in bus accident in St. Petersburg

Seven people were killed and six injured in a May 10 bus accident in St. Petersburg, Russia, when an overburdened driver lost control of his vehicle and plunged into the Moika River. Video footage shows the bus crashing through a median, colliding with a car and breaking through a bridge railing before becoming caught in the current and sinking within seconds. The fatalities were between 30 and 60 years old. Several people have not yet been identified.

The death toll among the 20 passengers on board would have been even higher had several passersby not immediately jumped into the icy water and helped those fleeing through the windows. The men, Russian citizens from Dagestan on their way to Friday prayers, told the press afterward that they were not heroes but were “just fulfilling (their) civic duty.” They come from a population that is relentlessly racialized by Russian nationalists and regularly branded as “foreigners.” The late Alexei Navalny, a Kremlin critic and darling of the American State Department, famously released videos in the 2000s advocating the shooting and deportation of these and other “immigrants.”

While he was in “moderate condition” in the hospital with a concussion, a head wound and a broken nose, authorities began questioning bus driver Rakhmatshokh Kurbonov. He has since been arrested for traffic violations and will remain in custody for at least two months, until July 9th. His lawyer objected to the penalty, pointing out that it was ordered before authorities had inspected the bus or questioned the company. This completely destroys the ability of the driver, who is suffering from a serious illness, to care for his three children.

Kurbonov had worked a 20-hour shift the day before the accident, his wife told the press on May 11. Despite physical exhaustion, however, he did not say that he fell asleep at the wheel. Instead, Korbunov insists that his brakes failed. A second film clip of the incident that has surfaced “supports this version,” the press office noted. Novye Izvestia. The driver apparently tried to regain control of the vehicle before the disaster.