The owner of a trucking company has been sentenced to two months in prison followed by one year of supervised release for making false statements to investigators after one of his trucks was involved in a crash that resulted in the deaths of seven motorcyclists in New Hampshire.
The defendant, 39-year-old Dunyadar Gasanov, pleaded guilty to three counts of lying to investigators in Springfield, Massachusetts, in August. The crash occurred in 2019 and involved a driver for Gasanov's company, Westfield Transport Inc.
As part of his sentence, Gasanov has been banned from driving commercially while on supervised release and has been ordered to pay a $300 special assessment.
Gasanov was accused of falsifying driver logs to evade federal highway safety regulations, such as exceeding limits on driving hours. He also admitted to instructing an employee to deactivate electronic logging devices to surpass the allowable driving hours.
Furthermore, Gasanov was found to have misled investigators about his relationship with the driver involved in the crash, Volodymyr Zhukovskyy. Zhukovskyy, who was under the influence of heroin, fentanyl, and cocaine at the time of the collision, admitted to causing the crash but was acquitted of the charges in New Hampshire.
Despite Zhukovskyy's admission and toxicology report, a judge dismissed eight impairment charges against him. His defense team argued that the lead biker involved in the crash was intoxicated and not paying attention, leading to the collision with Zhukovskyy's truck, which was hauling an empty flatbed trailer.
Gasanov faced a maximum penalty of five years in prison, one year of supervised release, and a $10,000 fine for each count. His co-defendant, Dartanayan Gasanov, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial after both were indicted in 2021.
