He was acquitted of criminal charges, but Volodymyr Zhukovskyy is still deemed responsible for the horrific crash that killed seven motorcycle riders.
Superior Court Judge Martin Honigberg denied Ukraine-born Zhukovskyy’s appeal of his driver’s license suspension, agreeing with the state’s administrative hearings officer who ruled Zhukovskyy’s habitual drug use is the prime reason seven people died in the June 2019 crash.
“The Court wishes we were in an alternate timeline where the Petitioner did not use drugs and all the motorcyclists were still alive,” Honigberg wrote.
Zhukovskyy was driving a pick-up truck with a tow trailer to deliver cars from Massachusetts to New Hampshire on the day of the crash. He began that day taking heroin and cocaine. After making his delivery, Zhukovskyy was several hours post-drug use and starting to feel the need for another dose.
Witnesses testified at the license suspension hearings last summer that Zhukovskyy’s truck crossed the center line on Route 2 in Randolph, kicking off the crash that killed seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club.
Zhukovskyy was acquitted in 2022 after a jury found him not guilty of driving while intoxicated. Evidence introduced at the trial showed that lead Jarheads motorcyclist, Albert “Woody” Mazza, was intoxicated during the ride and may have crossed the centerline first.
It came to light after his arrest that Zhukovskyy’s license should have been suspended in Massachusetts before the 2019 crash. Zhukovskyy’s troubled driving record included incidents in multiple states (Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, Texas, and Iowa), with notable arrests for DUI in Connecticut in May 2019 and possession of drug paraphernalia in Texas in February 2019.
Despite those issues, Zhukovskyy kept his Massachusetts commercial driver’s license (CDL) due to failures by the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles (RMV) to process out-of-state violation notifications, which led to the resignation of RMV Registrar Erin Deveney in June 2019
Once the trial was done, the license suspension was imposed by a state administrative hearings officer last year. The hearings officer ruled that Zhukovskyy, not Mazza, was responsible for starting the crash.
While the law allows a seven-year maximum suspension, the hearings officer previously ruled Zhukovskyy’s license has been effectively suspended since the 2019 crash. Honigberg’s ruling means Zhukovskyy can still apply to get his license back next year.