Olena Zaitseva, a 20-year-old student from Kharkiv, whose car plowed into a crowd of pedestrians on a sidewalk, killing five and injuring six people including a pregnant woman in Kharkiv on Oct. 18, was arrested for two months with no right for bail by a court in Kharkiv on Oct. 20.
The court hearing started with a surprise: The prosecution brought in evidence that Zaitseva was driving under influence of opiates when she hit the crowd.
Previously authorities said that Zaitseva was sober at the moment of the crash.
Defense attorney Yulia Kozyr claimed the test results couldn’t be allowed as evidence and said opiates could come from the sedatives that Zaitseva took to calm down soon after the accident.
Prosecutors submitted the latest analyses to the court, but the judge refused to consider them as an evidence.
Prosecutors demand to put Zaitseva in prison for 60 days as a pre-trial restriction, as the suspect could have fled the country or tried to influence the witnesses of the tragedy, victims or their families.
Kozyr said Zaitseva’s health was very poor, that she suffered from severe headaches, and asked the court to put Zaitseva under house arrest until the next hearing.
“She is a young woman who is only starting her life. And the fact that she will never forget those horrible events is already the most severe punishment for her,” the defense attorney said.
Zaitseva was passing a crossroads in her Lexus RX 350, ignoring a red light, when she hit a Volkswagen Touareg. The crash threw her car towards the sidewalk, where it swept through a dense group of people waiting to cross the road.
The defense attorney said that the second driver was to blame.
Zaitseva is the adopted daughter of Vasyl Zaitsev, a prominent Kharkiv businessman, and CEO of the Ukrenergochormet company.
Zaitseva in court refused to give any explanations about the crash, saying only that she “was really sorry that people were injured.”
“I really hope that their families will finally accept financial help from my family. That’s all that I am thinking about now,” Zaitseva said.
Kozyr said the car crash “a lesson for Zaitseva” and said she won’t drive a car ever again. Previously Zaitseva’s stepfather Zaitsev told journalists that she had never violated the traffic rules. However, during the court hearing, prosecutor Maksym Blokhin said Zaitseva had violated road safety rules six times within the two years since she was granted her driving license.
The lawyer claimed that prosecutors’ accusations as well as their demand to put Zaitseva in prison for sixty days as pre-trial restriction baseless and two severe for “a young woman of such poor health.”
If found guilty, Zaitseva could face up to 10 years in prison. The driver of the Volkswagen Touareg is a witness in the case.
