Transport company owner pleads guilty in crash that kills Navy veterans

BOSTON — The owner of a now-shuttered trucking company agreed to plead guilty Tuesday to federal charges stemming from a fatal New Hampshire crash that killed seven motorcyclists.

Dunyadar Gasanov, 39, pleaded guilty in Springfield, Mass., to three counts of making false statements to federal investigators. The trucking company he owned, Westfield Transport, Inc., employed Volodymyr Zhukovsky, a truck driver involved in a 2019 crash that killed seven motorcyclists in northern New Hampshire.

Gasanov was charged with falsifying driver logs to circumvent federal highway safety regulations, including exceeding hours a driver could work. He also instructed at least one employee to falsify records by deactivating recording devices to exceed hours of driving and lied to federal investigators about it. He also claimed to federal investigators that he met Zhukovsky the day he was hired, when in fact he had known him for years and knew that Zhukovsky had been charged with drunk driving.

“Keeping our communities safe comes in many forms. In this case, it’s about making sure commercial vehicle operators follow all required safety procedures and regulations,” Acting United States Attorney Joshua Levy said in a statement. “We will not forget the lives lost in June 2019 as a result of this conviction. This defendant broke laws that are essential to public safety and endangered everyone on the road, with tragic consequences.”

Gasanov’s lawyer, Peter Slepchuk, did not comment on the settlement.

Gasanov, who is scheduled to be sentenced Nov. 21, faces five years in prison, a year of supervised release and a $10,000 fine for each charge. His co-defendant, Dartanayan Gasanov, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial. Both were indicted in 2021.

A 2022 jury found Zhukovsky not guilty of multiple charges of murder and manslaughter in connection with the June 21, 2019, crash in Randolph that killed seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, a Marine Corps veterans organization, and their spouses from New England.

Zhukovskyy’s Massachusetts driver’s license was automatically suspended in New Hampshire after his arrest following the crash, but he sought to have it reinstated earlier this year. A Department of Safety administrative judge upheld the suspension in May and, following a hearing last month, issued an order Wednesday extending it until June 2026, seven years after the crash.

Seven years is the maximum allowed by law. The state argued the clock should start this year, meaning the license would remain suspended until 2031.

During a hearing in June, families and friends of the crash victims and survivors asked the judge to impose the maximum suspension.

“Someone who has caused so much incredible, horrible pain to so many people has the nerve to say, ‘I want my privilege back,’” Jarheads member David Bark said at the hearing. “It’s not a constitutional right to drive a car, to operate a motor vehicle on a public road. It’s a privilege.”

History continues