Truck driver charged with 7 homicides in motorcycle crash

The driver of a truck in a fiery collision on a rural New Hampshire highway that killed seven motorcyclists was charged Monday with seven counts of negligent homicide.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, 23, was arrested Monday morning at his home in West Springfield, Massachusetts, on a fugitive from justice charge related to Friday's crash, the New Hampshire attorney general's office said.

He was expected to make a court appearance on the charge Monday afternoon in Springfield.

Zhukovskyy was questioned at the scene of the crash and allowed to return to Massachusetts, the National Transportation Safety Board has said. The fugitive charge is standard for someone charged in a warrant in another state, Massachusetts State Police said.

 

A man who answered the phone at the home of Zhukovskyy's family and would identify himself only as his brother-in-law said Monday that the family is in shock and feeling the same pain as everyone else but couldn't say whether the driver was right or wrong.

Since the accident, the brother-in-law said, Zhukovskyy had remained in his room, not eaten and talked to no one.

Zhukovskyy's pickup truck, towing a flatbed trailer, collided with a group of 10 motorcycles Friday on a two-lane highway in the northern New Hampshire community of Randolph, investigators said.

The victims were members or supporters of the Marine JarHeads, a New England motorcycle club that includes Marines and their spouses, and ranged in age from 42 to 62.

George Loring, a JarHeads member who lives in Hingham, Massachusetts, and was a few hundred yards from the crash, said Zhukovskyy has "got to live with it for the rest of his life." "Everyone's suffering so much.

I guess it's going to help a little bit, knowing, but I feel sorry for the guy who did it," Loring said. "It's so sad for the brothers and sisters who died. You can be angry at him, you can be whatever. I don't know. I'm glad he's been arrested." Authorities identified the dead as Michael Ferazzi, 62, of Contoocook, New Hampshire; Albert Mazza Jr., 59, of Lee, New Hampshire; Desma Oakes, 42, of Concord, New Hampshire; Aaron Perry, 45, of Farmington, New Hampshire; Daniel Pereira, 58, of Riverside, Rhode Island; and Jo-Ann and Edward Corr, both 58, of Lakeville, Massachusetts.