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Trucker acquitted in New Hampshire crash that killed seven motorcyclists, faces hearing to get his license back – Boston 25 News

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CONCORD, NH – A commercial vehicle driver who was acquitted in 2022 of causing the deaths of seven motorcyclists in New Hampshire is scheduled for a hearing on Wednesday in Concord, New Hampshire, to get his driver’s license back.

Volodymyr Zhukovsky. who came to the United States from Ukraine at age 10 is facing an administrative hearing by the New Hampshire Department of Public Safety. A note on the hearing said that due to the complexity of the case, the agency had set aside three days for the presentation of evidence in the matter.

“I would like to request a hearing to get my license back,” Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 28, wrote to the New Hampshire Department of Safety in September, according to records obtained by The Associated Press under the state’s open records law .

A jury found him not guilty of multiple counts of manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter in connection with a 2019 collision in Randolph, New Hampshire. The crash killed seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, an organization of Marine Corps veterans and their spouses in New England.

Reached by phone Tuesday, Zhukovsky’s attorney, Earle Wingate III, said Zhukovsky would testify via video on Wednesday. Wingate says Zhukovsky was prevented from attending the hearing in person.

Prosecutors argued that Zhukovsky, who had been using heroin, fentanyl and cocaine on the day of the accident, swerved back and forth repeatedly before the collision and told police he caused it. But a judge dismissed eight impairment charges and his lawyers said the lead motorcyclist was drunk and wasn’t looking where he was going when he lost control of his motorcycle and slid in front of Zhukovsky’s truck.

Zhukovskyy’s driver’s license was automatically revoked following his arrest, and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested him after the verdict, citing previous convictions for drug possession, driving with a revoked license, providing false information and theft. Zhukovsky was transferred from a county jail in New Hampshire to a federal penitentiary in Pennsylvania.

Zhukovskyy was released on supervised release from the Pennsylvania facility in April, according to detention and immigration officials. This type of order allows immigrants to live and work in the United States as long as they meet regularly with ICE officials and agree to comply with certain conditions.

Zhukovskyy’s lawyer declined to disclose where Zhukovskyy currently lives during the driver’s license hearing.

A judge had ordered Zhukovsky’s deportation, but his lawyer in the deportation case sought asylum for his client.

The Boston Globe reported in February that it was unclear whether Zhukovsky would be sent to his native Ukraine during the ongoing war with Russia. The United States has suspended repatriation flights to Ukraine and granted temporary protected status to qualified Ukrainians.

Zhukovskyy is awaiting the state administrative hearing in New Hampshire as he deals with an unresolved drunken driving charge in Connecticut, where he was arrested a month before the 2019 crash in New Hampshire.

At the time of the accident, Zhukovskyy’s Massachusetts commercial driver’s license would have been revoked following his arrest in Connecticut.

Connecticut officials alerted the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles, but Zhukovskyy’s driver’s license was not revoked due to a backlog of driving offense reports from other states. In a review, federal investigators found similar backlog problems in Rhode Island.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

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