The prosecutor spoke in favor of extending the term of house arrest to actor Mikhail Efremov, accused of committing a fatal accident. This was announced by a TASS source on Thursday, July 31.
Efremov’s lawyer Elman Pashayev opposes. He asks to allow the actor a two-hour walk.
The meeting is held behind closed doors. According to the Izvestia correspondent, the common-law wife of Sergei Zakharov, who died in the accident, was invited to attend, but neither she nor her lawyer came. Probably, it was planned to consider the issue of her victimization.
On July 30, Pashayev said that Efremov would not ask the court to consider the case in a special order, since this implies an admission of guilt, and the actor does not admit it.
The preliminary hearing of the accident was supposed to begin the day before in the Presnensky Court of Moscow. The artist was taken there, but the meeting was eventually postponed due to the failure of Efremov’s defenders to appear at the trial.
On the evening of June 8, on Smolenskaya Square, Efremov’s SUV drove into the oncoming lane and rammed a Lada van head-on. The driver of the domestic car, the courier Sergei Zakharov, was seriously injured and died from his injuries the next morning at the N.N. Sklifosovsky.
The examination showed the presence of alcohol and traces of drugs in the actor’s body at the time of the accident. On the fact of the incident, a criminal case was opened under Part 4 of Art. 264 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation “Violation of the rules of the road and the operation of vehicles, committed by a person under the influence of alcohol and resulting in the death of a person.” The prosecutor’s office has already approved the indictment in this case.
Efremov remained silent for some time after the incident, but then published a video in which he apologized and offered compensation to the family of the deceased. In turn, the lawyer Alexander Dobrovinsky, who represented the family, announced the refusal of clients from the proposed compensation. Later, another lawyer, Tatyana Golovkina, reported that the actor did not offer monetary compensation to the relatives of the deceased.
The victims in the case are the official wife of the deceased, his brother and two sons. Zakharov’s common-law wife also asked to recognize her as a victim.