In 2015, Russian-Latvian rally driver Vasily Gryazin was the victim of a terrible incident. The athlete had a serious accident due to a failed maneuver carried out on the track by an American soldier. As a result of the collision, the driver was seriously injured, after which he needed a long recovery …
The foreigner didn’t even bother to apologize.
The incident occurred on the Latvian highway “Riga – Vetslaizene”. The US soldier decided to pass the truck and stopped in the oncoming lane. At that time, Gryazin and his navigator were heading to training.
“When I drove to the top of the hill, I saw a car trying to overtake a truck in the opposite direction, twenty or thirty meters to go, I turned sharply to the side, he did too, then we collided at an angle,” the athlete told Gazeta.ru.
autosport.com
As a result of the accident, the Russian suffered a broken leg and numerous injuries, and his navigator escaped with a hand injury. The American got it too: he broke his leg. All the participants in the accident were transferred to the Cesis hospital. For some time, the soldier and the runner were in the same ward in intensive care.
The American serviceman did not even apologize to his victim and, after being discharged, hurried to hide from Latvia and never contacted Gryazin.
On the fact of the accident, the Latvian law enforcement agencies opened a case, but the transfer of the American to a German hospital made him an unattainable target for the police. Numerous inquiries to the US consulate and defense departments did not lead to the desired result. Some time later, the head of the Cēsis section of the Vidzeme regional state police department announced the end of the investigation.
It soon became known that due to the impossibility of catching the criminal, the Latvian authorities transferred the case to the US prosecutor’s office. Later, the department explained that leaving a foreign country is a classic scheme to avoid punishment.
