Drunken killers on the road: crimes and punishments for the "mighties of this world"

Yefremov is a public person, the story is loud, and the discussion will not subside for a long time. However, the deceased driver of the delivery service is not an official of the Moscow City Hall Pak, who was once so unsuccessfully beaten by the players Kokorin and Mamaev. Therefore, the question of whether the artist, who sent a simple hard worker to the next world, will answer according to the strictness of the law, remains open.

Let's see how such stories ended earlier - alas, but the drunken killers on Russian roads are not a unique phenomenon. According to the traffic police, last year 14,689 accidents were committed while intoxicated, in which 4,050 people died and 20 thousand were injured. That is, every day on the roads of Russia an average of 11 people die due to excessive alcohol cravings.

We will never know about the majority of such cases - not everyone falls into the news bulletins. Often the “heroes” of such events are people with a special status: judges, prosecutors, police officers, and even ministers of the church. Novye Izvestia studied high-profile cases over the past 10 years in order to understand the punishment that “privileged” categories of people can face, who are in the habit of ignoring generally accepted rules and facing the law a little “more equal” than the rest.

The price of freedom for killer judges is 1.5 million rubles

Near Moscow judge Valery Sasu, staged a drunken accident with two dead in 2011 in Ulyanovsk, after two years of litigation was appointed penalty of 5.5 years in a penal colony. The state prosecution demanded to imprison him for 8.5 years. Valery Sas did not plead guilty, claiming that the court found him guilty under pressure from the press, but paid compensation to the family of the victims in the amount of 1.65 million rubles.

In the same 2011, a judge from Kazan Eduard Soldatov, while intoxicated, crushed a 23-year-old pedestrian. At first, no sanctions followed: the judge wrote a letter of resignation of his own free will after pickets at the court. A criminal case was opened later at the request of the head of the Investigative Committee Bastrykin. However, after the Soldatov paid compensation of 1.5 million rubles and apologized, the criminal case was closed. According to the official version, the relatives themselves petitioned to dismiss the case on the advice of the imam.

The year 2014 was especially “fruitful” for sentences for drunken judges at the wheel. The Chief Justice of Chuvashia Andrey Emelyanov , who shot down a 34-year-old woman at a pedestrian crossing in 2011, received a suspended sentence. Former Acting as Chairman of the Fraternal Court, Andrei Lyapustin received 2 years probation for a drunk accident with severe injuries to the victim - he had to be introduced into an artificial coma. Judge of the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg Irina Serova arranged a road accident with a motorcyclist with a fatal outcome and received 2 years in a penal colony.

With God's help: how killer priests evade responsibility

In February 2015, priest Vladimir Gavrilov (confessor of Fedor Emelianenko) made a drunk accident on a Toyota Land Cruiser 200 SUV. After the accident, he fell asleep in a car, and traffic police found empty vodka bottles, a gun and 3 million rubles in the car. He predicted the death of a journalist who arrived the next day, and threatened police officers with an expert examination, which for his clergy would show that the driver of the truck driving along the main road was to blame. Punishment for Gavrilov did not follow, he was not even deprived of a driver’s license. It remains only to pray, so as not to collide with him on the road.

In June 2016 in Petrozavodsk court handed down the verdict priest Ivan Petunova that while driving drunk, knocked to death a man. The punishment is 4 years in a penal colony and compensation of 1 million rubles.

In 2017, the rector of the Church of the Baptism in the village of Parskoy, hieromonk Protoleon (Belozertsev), while drunk, shot down a resident of Shui, who was riding a bicycle. The woman died from her injuries. The Kinesham Diocese paid for the funeral and paid compensation to the family of the deceased. More about the progress of the criminal case is not known. Probably, after payment of compensation, it was closed.

In January 2019, a drunk priest, Andrei Parfyonov, in Velikiye Luki, Pskov Region, caused a traffic accident with two victims. All survived, but injured the injured. The punishment is 18 months probation.

Law enforcement officers are “more equal” than others in front of the law

The ways of the Lord turned out to be so mysterious that God’s business can be seen as particularly sensitive in “reciprocal” stories, where the ministers of the church began to appear in the role of victims. So, in September 2016, a policeman from Ivanteevka, Yuri Ivanov, after drinking in a bar, crashed at high speed into a car parked on the Yaroslavl highway in the area of Pushkino. The whole family of a priest of 4 people, including a small child and a pregnant woman, who were in a car parked on the side of the road, died. The trial lasted a year and ended with six years in a penal colony and compensation of about 5 million rubles.

In other cases, punishment is not necessary. In November 2013, in Kaluga, the head of the MREO of the State Traffic Safety Inspectorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Kaluga Region, police lieutenant colonel Sergei Schennikov, knocked down a pedestrian to death. But the investigation found that there was 10 times more alcohol in the blood of a pedestrian than a policeman (0.58 ppm with the current permissible error of 0.16 ppm, the investigation considered the “residual presence of alcohol”), and generally he jumped under the wheels at night.

In Buryatia in 2017, a drunken policeman Gleb Surguchev with a passenger (also a policeman) on the M-55 highway hit a girl in the evening. The upper part of the body dismembered from a blow in half struck the windshield and entered the salon. The culprits continued their movement and until morning tried to hide and burn the car with the remains of the body, but unsuccessfully. A year later, the family of the deceased found out that the case was closed, and even the rights of the guilty were returned.

However, there are exceptions when justice overtakes law enforcement officers. But, as you know, exceptions only confirm the rule.

In May 2018, in Izhevsk, a drunk Interior Ministry officer shot down a cyclist to death. The driver denied his guilt and the case, perhaps it would have been possible to hush up if the deceased had not been an employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs either. The result is a scorcher for 3 years in a settlement colony.

In March 2020, near Engels, a drunk driver lost control and flew into a ditch. As a result, the passenger of the car died. The court passed one of the most severe punishments in our selection - 5 years and 1 month in a penal colony. One can only speculate about the reasons for the triumph of justice, but we are inclined to believe that the most likely reason for the severity lies in the fact that the passenger was a deputy of the legislative assembly of the Fedorovsky district of the Saratov region.

More than 5 years of imprisonment for staging a fatal accident, as our selection shows, this is really a severe punishment. People in uniform, usually cost less.

In May 2019, in Saratov, the city police inspector Mikhail Plotnikov, drunk, knocked a schoolboy to death and tried to escape from the scene. The defense side requested that the case be examined in a special order, but the mother of the deceased child refused. The case went quickly: a sentence of 4.5 years in a penal colony (the charge required 5.5 years) and compensation of 800 thousand rubles was passed after 3 months.

Hunting season

An interesting trend is worth noting on the basis of the analysis of judicial practice in relation to drunk drivers who had a fatal accident. It can be assumed that at different times, the investigative committee lowers orders for unbiased work on different groups of people. In 2013 - 2015, priests were a priority (even journalists arrived to detain Gavrilov), in 2014 special attention was focused on the judges.

And since 2018, criminal cases against employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs have begun in large numbers. Yes, they so zealously took up this matter that they even began to review old cases. For example, the head of the traffic police of Troitsk, Chelyabinsk Region, Marat Khakimov, https://74.ru/text/criminal/66391939/ was canceled the acquittal for ordering his subordinate not to indicate in the protocol the fact of alcoholic intoxication of a colleague who had an accident. Do you believe that until 2018 the police did not drive drunk while driving, and then broke loose?

We did not consider statistics on drunken traffic accidents with artists and other celebrities in detail. There is also not a single sentence with a maximum term under this article. Nobody has served 12 years. Everywhere the story is standard - 3-5 years maximum settlement colony. And most often it is possible to pay off. The punishment, as a rule, the stricter the higher the status of the deceased under the wheels.

One thing is for sure: representatives of various status groups are impudent on the roads regularly, they drive drunk and shoot down pedestrians, too. But the severity of the punishment probably varies from installations from above. It remains only to observe whether the order of “fair trial” over artists, singers and other show men will now appear.