Signs of trouble are beginning to appear in the police investigation of a jet-setting 22-year-old man who allegedly struck and killed an elderly woman on a sidewalk with his SUV.
Stanislav Tolstosheyev is suspected of hitting two people when he drove his Mercedes SUV onto a sidewalk in Kyiv on Jan. 9. A 70-year-old woman died instantly, and a man, 62, was injured.
Toltosheyev, the driver and son of a wealthy building contractor, was hospitalized. He subsequently told reporters that he fainted before the car crash due to a chronic heart disease.
The Kyiv Post repeatedly reached out to Tolstosheyev for comment. He didn’t answer text messages and phone calls.
He was supposed to appear in court five days later for a judge to decide on whether to place him under arrest. However, police decided to keep him hospitalized because his heart condition rendered him “non-transportable.”
The excuse was treated with skepticism by journalists and social media users.
Journalists identified Tolstosheyev as the son of businessman Andriy Tolstosheyev from Donetsk Oblast. He owns a construction business and was reportedly close with the local members of Party of Regions, the former ruling political party of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, also from Donetsk Oblast. Andriy Tolstosheyev’s firm won state construction tenders during Yanukovych’s rule.
Ukraine has a long history of young jetsetters with wealthy and influential parents who evade justice for deadly driving incidents. Stanislav Tolstosheyev’s case has elicited much public interest with the aim of securing an objective investigation and fair trial.
Moreover, this wasn’t Stanislav Tolstosheyev’s first car crash. In 2013, he hit another vehicle and injured the driver. Nearly three years ago, the case is still being investigated, according to the Kyiv Prosecutor’s Office.
Stanislav Tolstosheyev’s accounts on social media networks reveal a lifestyle that is hardly compatible with a chronic heart condition that the police say he has.
He brags about his hard-partying lifestyle on Instagram and Vkontakte, a popular Russian version social network. Most photos show him holding alcoholic drinks, smoking or driving a car.
In a short Instagram video that became especially popular after the car accident, Stanislav Tolstosheyev, wearing aviator sunglasses, takes a puff on his cigarette and then starts flipping Hr 50 bills into the air, grinning.
A video that Stanislav Tolstosheyev posted on Instagram shows him flipping Hr 50 bills into the air.
Some allege his habits haven’t changed in the hospital.
Iryna Kovalchuk, a journalist of the Segodnya daily newspaper, posted a photo of Stanislav Tolstosheyev smoking in a stairwell of the hospital where he is staying, that she says she was taken on Jan. 10, the day after the car accident.
On the same day Stanislav Tolstosheyev asked his Vkontakte followers to recommend “an interesting, breathtaking movie.”
His accounts in Vkontakte and Instagram were deleted after the car incident, but can still be found cached.
According to Anatoliy Andorsovych, head of the Kyiv police investigation department, a criminal investigation is unde rway and Stanislav Tolstosheyev is a suspect. He said that the investigation and prosecutors are convinced that the suspect should be arrested, but for that, he needs to be brought to court.
Now, Andorsovych said, a special medical commission is conducting an examination of Stanislav Tolstosheyev to decide whether he can be taken to court.
Segodnya, a daily newspaper owned by Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov, a businessman from Donetsk associated with Party of Regions, was the only media outlet that Stanislav Tolstosheyev spoke with.
Segodnya quoted Stanislav Tolstosheyev as saying that he was unconscious at the moment of the car accident, and that he fainted for the first time in his life. He also said he thought it might be an epileptic seizure.
Andorsovych said that Stanislav Tolstosheyev’s parents told investigators that their son has a chronic heart disease.
“If his health condition meant he wasn’t eligible for a driver’s license – and therefore for driving a car – the people who gave him the medical certificate necessary to get the license will be brought to justice,” Andorsovych said.
Interior Ministry spokesman Artem Shevchenko wrote on Facebook that “nobody will be hiding anyone from justice.”
He said the police doesn’t “recommend that the suspect try to escape justice.”
