Drunken driver who killed a motor-cyclist convicted (photo)
The driver went out of the car and kicked the victim for some time: the scandal took place in Kastsyukovichy.
On February 14, the court issued the
long-expected verdict to the inhabitant of Kastsyukovichy who had committed the
scandalous accident. The driver ran over a motor-cyclist who was waiting for
the green lights. The driver was moving with murderous
intensity. It happened at the central cross-roads in Kastsyukovichy - a small
town in the East of Belarus - on September 23, 2011.
The car dragged the
motor-cyclist for several dozen meters. Only the stone fence made it stop. An
then an unexplainable brutality happened. The driver went out of the car, came
over to the motor-cyclist's body and...started kicking it!
A photo
of the accident site, several hours later
A 16-year-old girl
Alena, one of the eye-witnesses of the accident, shows the accident site and
recalls how it was.
"The
car was dragging the motor-cyclist until it crashed into a fence. The driver
went out and I realized he was very drunk, by his appearance. I ran up to the
place and followed him. He approached the motor-cyclist, kicked him several
times and said "He'll survive".
The
"Audi" driver managed to escape from the accident site, as the
passers-by were shocked. The drunken 20-year-old driver was detained only the
next morning after the accident. The quantity of alcohol in his blood was 1.7 parts per mille.
Motor-cyclist
Zhenya Barautsou died of numerous injuries 10 days after the accident. He
didn't live just a week to see his 19th birthday.
Yauhenij
Barautsou (right) was a student of Homel engineering university and worked in
the Ministry of Emergency Situations
The story made a
great noise in Kastsyukovichy. The local youth were incensed as there were
rumours in the little town that the driver might get a small term.
The court of
Kastsyukovichy decided to punish the guilty with four years of living in a special
colony-settlement, and paying 15 million roubles to the victim's family. The
colony-settlement is not prison, it is the territory at which a convict is
allowed to move freely. There are no guards - just administration, which may
give permit to leave the territory from time to time.
Local
youngsters on the way to one of the court trials, holding photos of the
deceased
Alyaksandr, the
elder brother of the deceased motor-cyclist, is convinced that the Belarusian
legislation is too mild with regard to the drunk driving:
"He
may be released from this colony-settlement for good behaviour in some six
months, and only come there for checking from time to time. The sum which he is
supposed to pay us does not cover our moral and material damage as our mother's
health deteriorated after the accident and the medicines are expensive. I'm
afraid that drunken drivers will go on killing innocent people and will get
ridiculous punishments for that".
Alyaksandr and his
friends intend to turn the public's attention to the necessity to make
punishment for drunk driving stricter.
Yauhen Barautsou is
one of nearly 200 people who died on the roads of Belarus because of drunken
drivers. In 2011, the traffic police revealed more than 50 thousand (!) facts
of drunk driving.
Youth
of Kastsyukovichy placed a poster saying "Stop Killers on the
Road!!!" with a crossed-out bottle, at the accident site
In many countries,
those who commit drunk driving, let alone causing damage, are often punished
with big fines and imprisonment. Meanwhile, in Belarus one gets administrative
punishment for the first time.
It is illustrative
that the tragic and comic story connected with drunk driving happened exactly
in Kastsyukovichy, a month before this accident. More than a million people
watched the video where an absolutely drunk woman-driver is detained by the
traffic policemen, which was filmed by a witness with his cell-phone camera.
She was punished with 3 days of detention and a fine of a little more than 1
million Belarusian roubles. Maybe, if that lady was punished more severely, it
would prevent the drunken inhabitant of Kastsyukovichy from driving on
September 23...