RANDOLPH – The trial is over, but the anguish — and the anger — will endure for a long time.
Volodymyr Zhukovskyy, a 26-year-old truck driver from Massachusetts, was found not guilty last week of all charges related to a horrific 2019 crash that left seven motorcyclists dead on U.S. Route 2 in this North Country community.
The Ukraine native spent more than three years in jail for crimes that a jury of his peers found he did not commit.
Seven people — Marines and the women who loved them — lost their lives in the collision. Their deaths led to an outpouring of support from across New England and the nation.
For those touched by the tragedy, the end of the 12-day trial brings neither closure nor comfort.
Philip Cloutier, the fire chief in neighboring Gorham, said members of his department who responded to the crash have been checking on each other since the verdict, making sure everyone is doing OK.
“It’s going to take a long time for these wounds to heal, and for some people they may never,” Cloutier said.
“Regardless of what the verdict was, there’ll still be a lot of hurt that goes along with this for a long time,” the chief said.
First responders are used to caring for victims at crash scenes, “but certainly not to this scale,” Cloutier said.
Cloutier and other firefighters were under subpoena as potential witnesses, so he had to avoid watching or reading coverage of the trial, he said, but he was never called to testify.
People are glad the trial is over, the chief said. “Everybody has their opinion about how it turned out,” he said.
“I have to trust in the justice system, that they did their job. The job of a jury is to decide based on the evidence.”
“You really have to look into yourself and decide what closes it for you,” he said. “Would a guilty verdict have done that for most people? Probably not.”
THE VICTIMS: Clockwise, from top left: Jo-Ann and Edward Corr of Lakeville, Mass., Desma Oickle of Concord, Aaron Perry of Farmington, Daniel Pereira of Riverside, R.I., Albert Mazza of Lee and Michael Ferazzi of Contoocook.
Remembering, not reliving
Dewald Steinmann said he “made sure” he was not part of the witness list for the trial.
Steinmann owns the Mount Jefferson View motel and cabins in Randolph, where members of the Jarhead Motorcycle Club, a club for Marines and Navy Corpsmen, stay during their annual gathering in the White Mountains.
“Everything that happened, I don’t choose to relive any of it,” he said.
A memorial to the “Fallen Seven” who died in a horrific crash on June 21, 2019 was built later that year on the grounds of Mount Jefferson View, where members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club stay for their annual gathering in the White Mountains.
Club members staying at his motel during the trial kept him informed, he said, and they called to tell him the verdict.
“They’re a great group of people,” he said. “They help each other out, they stand together.”
Steinmann cherishes his final memories of those who died, including Al “Woody” Mazza, 59, who was the club’s president.
Steinmann’s mother had died at the age of 60 just a few months before, and Mazza noticed the photo of her that Steinmann had in his office.
“He said he couldn’t believe anybody dying at the age of 60,” he said.
“And he died a few hours later,” Steinmann said. “I think about that often.”
Just before the crash, Mazza asked if he could take Steinmann’s two young children out to play.
“He grabbed them and took them out to the field and played with them,” he said. “Throwing them up in the air and swinging them around. Making faces at them, making them smile.
“The rest of the group, they were just watching them too, as he was playing with the kids. It was nice to see him happy,” he said.
Steinmann went outside to retrieve the kids for supper, and Mazza told him they were on their way to a fundraising event.
Minutes later, Mazza and six of his friends were dead, and Steinmann and other local residents were doing what they could to help the living.
Visitors to the Jarheads memorial in Randolph leave small tokens of remembrance, including wristbands and silk flowers.
A memorial to the “Fallen Seven” was built on the grounds of the Mount Jefferson View later that year. Two granite pillars bear the names of those who died, and a metal sculpture depicts five motorcycles bearing seven sets of silver wings.
On each motorcycle, the names of those who died: Al “Woody” Mazza; Danny “Danny Boy” Pereira; Ed “Taz” Corr and his wife, Jo-Ann Corr; Michael “Fritz” Ferazzi; Aaron “Stitches” Perry and his girlfriend, Desma Oickle.
Visitors leave small mementos — a Marine Corps coin, silk flowers, an American flag pin and colorful wristbands.
Just up the road, a simpler memorial has taken shape at the crash site, with rocks, decorations of red, white and blue, and a piece of molten metal.
The memorials caught the attention of Robert Brun, a retired police officer from Sandwich, Mass., who was vacationing with his family. He knew about the “Fallen Seven” from a friend and fellow police officer who was friends with some of the Jarheads who died. “I didn’t know this was the place,” he said.
Brun, a police prosecutor, wonders how the jury reached its conclusion. “There has to be some sort of negligence to hit seven people,” he said.
With his young grandson in the backseat, Brun stopped to take photos of the memorial at the Mount Jefferson View.
There are other remembrances of that day.
Outside the fire station in Randolph, a granite bench honors “all those who came to the aid of others on June 21, 2019.”
A granite bench in front of the fire station in Randolph honors those “who came to the aid of others” on June 21, 2019.
A large American flag and seven small flags, lit by solar lights, adorn the front lawn of the now closed Lowe’s Store and gas station.
That’s where Lori Korzen of Berlin was parked Thursday morning.
Korzen was waiting in the parking lot for a delivery of lunches, prepared by culinary students at White Mountain Community College with food from New Hampshire Food Bank. Every weekday, she picks up the lunches and takes them to a park in Berlin to distribute to about 60 school kids who otherwise might not have a healthy meal.
Korzen used to be an advanced emergency medical technician in Berlin and Gorham. “So I know people who responded to the scene,” she said. “They were traumatized.”
After the verdict, Korzen said, “I think the general feeling is everyone just feels drained, waiting for justice.
“It’s an empty feeling,” she said.
Lori Korzen of Berlin, who previously was a first responder in Berlin and Gorham, said those who responded to the crash were “traumatized.”
“They were all hoping there would be some closure when the verdict came out, and they got anything but closure,” she said. “It seems like lives were lost and this kid got away with it.”
“I don’t want to judge the jury” in the Zhukovskyy case, Korzen said. “They obviously had evidence that maybe the public was not privy to, and that was their judgment.”
“You can’t fix a tragedy with another tragedy,” she said. “The other way, you would have a young man spending his life in prison.”
“You just hate to see such a senseless tragedy,” she said.
People in Randolph, she said, are still in shock. But they are supporting their friends and neighbors.
It’s what people in small towns do, she said, especially in the North Country. “They do rally around each other to take care of each other when they need it,” she said.
‘Destroyed’ by the verdict
Steven Allison of Manchester organized the Ride for the Fallen, held just two weeks after the crash to raise money for the families of those who died. Flanked by state police cruisers and motorcycles, riders traveled up Route 3 from southern New Hampshire to Route 2 in Randolph, where they honored the lost and held their friends close.
“It just destroyed me when I heard that verdict,” Allison, an Air Force veteran, said last week.
Details of the motorcycle for Ed and Jo-Ann Corr in the Randolph memorial.
“I don’t put the blame on the jury itself,” he said. “They can only rule on what they’re given for evidence, but there was way too much evidence that was not included.”
After the judge dismissed eight DWI-related charges, the jury was instructed not to consider any testimony or evidence related to Zhukovskyy’s use of, or impairment by, drugs on the day of the crash.
“I just don’t feel they got the real, whole story,” Allison said.
He hopes some of that evidence will be admitted in the civil cases that were filed against the driver and the Massachusetts trucking company for which he worked.
He said he’s glad that Zhukovskyy was not freed after his acquittal but is being detained by federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “At least he’s being held by ICE,” he said. “I hope he gets deported back to Ukraine and I hope they make him go fight against the Russians.”
The crash hasn’t stopped Allison from riding. He and his wife just returned from a 5,000-mile, 12-day motorcycle trip.
But he thinks about it “every day,” he said. “It sits in the back of my mind.”
What does Allison want the families of the Jarheads to know?
“We will never forget,” he said.
“We’re going to just keep wishing and praying the best that we can for them, for going on, and hope that in the long run, in the end, justice will be served.”
Celebrating how they lived
Gorham Fire Chief Cloutier said he hopes people also remember those who helped that day.
“The mental health of first responders needs to be on everybody’s mind all the time,” he said. “It can be very hard for us.”
Mementos are left at the Fallen 7 memorial in Randolph, like these silk flowers for Al “Woody” Mazza, president of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club.
Motel owner Steinmann said he doesn’t talk about what happened three years ago; he keeps his memories private.
“In my own time, I do cry, and I remember, and I do laugh at the times I’ve had with some of them,” he said.
The Jarheads continue to stay at his cabins a couple of times a year, to pay their respects to those who died and to find some solace in the peace and beauty of the mountains.
“Luckily they have a place they can come and sit and grieve, and just remember the ones that they lost,” he said.
They have already made plans to return next year for the anniversary of the crash, he said.
Now that the trial is over, Steinmann said he hopes the families and friends of those who died are able “to move forward and just remember and forgive.”
“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” he said. “All that matters is that they still remember how they lived.”
