The key facts
- Instead of four years of forced labor, the defendants received three years of imprisonment each
- The bus owner was taken into custody in the courtroom
- Four people died in the January 29, 2024 crash, and two teenagers were seriously injured
Appeal replaces forced labor with imprisonment
The Sverdlovsk Regional Court has toughened the punishment for three defendants in the case of a fatal crash involving a bus carrying a children's hockey team. As reported by Life.ru citing the joint press service of the region's courts, instead of the original four years of forced labor, the defendants received real prison terms. Bus owner Yevgeny Lobov was sentenced to three years in a general-regime colony and taken into custody in the courtroom. Driver Igor Minenko and mechanic Maxim Adiyev each received three years in a colony-settlement; they are required to travel to the place of serving their sentences on their own under the supervision of the penal system.
What changed compared to the first verdict
The original verdict was handed down by the Nevayansk City Court on May 21: all three were sentenced to four years of forced labor; the driver was also banned from driving for two and a half years, and the mechanic was prohibited from monitoring the technical condition of vehicles for three years. The prosecutor's office, the victims, and the convicts' lawyers appealed the decision, after which a higher court reviewed the case. In addition to replacing the punishment, the appellate court reduced Adiyev's ban on work involving monitoring the technical condition of transport and releasing vehicles onto routes to two years and ten months. Earlier, the court also partially granted the victims' claims: two million rubles each were recovered from the bus owner in favor of the relatives of the deceased, and 1.5 million rubles each in favor of the injured children.
Circumstances of the crash
The tragedy occurred on January 29, 2024, near the settlement of Verkh-Neyvinsky. The bus was carrying a coach and 16 members of a children's hockey team from Chelyabinsk to Novouralsk. According to the case materials, the driver was speeding, the bus's front tire burst while in motion, after which it crossed into the oncoming lane, collided with a Citroën car, went off the road, and crashed into trees. The driver and two passengers of the car were killed, as well as the team's coach; two young athletes suffered serious injuries. The defendants were found guilty of providing services that failed to meet safety requirements, putting a technically defective vehicle into operation, and committing traffic violations that resulted in deaths: the investigation established that the bus was sent on its route with defective tires.
