Circumstances have been mitigated: why the culprit of the death of 10 people received a suspended sentence

The suspended sentence ended in Nizhnevartovsk in the case of the death of ten people, including four children, as a result of the explosion of a gas cylinder in an apartment building. The emergency occurred in December 2022 — the explosion was so powerful that two entrances of the five-story building completely collapsed. Oleg Evstegneev, an employee of a local gas station, was found guilty in the case, but the court found him guilty of only one count of the charge and sentenced him to four years probation. The court also dismissed the claim of the city administration for 280 million rubles. The prosecutor's office will appeal the verdict and demand a real term for the convicted person. The reasons for the imposition of such a lenient punishment, given the magnitude of the consequences, are in the Izvestia article.

How the tragedy happened

The explosion in the panel house on Mira Street in Nizhnevartovsk occurred on the evening of December 4, 2022. It was Sunday, and therefore almost all two hundred residents of the five-story building were in their apartments. They rushed outside in light clothes, ignoring the twenty-degree frost.

As the investigation later established, the epicenter was the apartment on the second floor, located almost in the center of the house. The blast wave instantly destroyed the interstory ceilings in the third and fourth entrances — a through hole formed in the Khrushchev. Rescuers arrived at the scene of the emergency and spent three days clearing the rubble. Eight bodies of the dead were found among the wreckage, including four children between the ages of three and seventeen. Rescuers also pulled the bodies of retired spouses out of the ruins of the house. They were taken to the hospital in serious condition, where doctors diagnosed 70% burns to the body, but the spouses could not be saved. Thus, the number of victims increased to 10.

Later it turned out that the five-storey building was not gassed and its residents used gas cylinders for cooking and other household needs. One of these cylinders caused the emergency. As the investigation found out, the landlord of the apartment, who also died from the effects of the explosion, asked Oleg Evstegneev, the operator of a local automobile gas station, to fill the cylinder, and Oleg Evstegneev, in the cold, without special equipment, complied with the request — which led to an overflow of the cylinder with gas. And after the balloon got into the heat, the pressure in it became critical, and it exploded.

After the rescue work was completed and the building was inspected, the city administration concluded that the house needed to be demolished. Residents were provided with apartments from the maneuver fund, and insurance premiums from 790 thousand to 2.6 million rubles were paid.

What influenced the sentencing?

The Investigative Committee launched an investigation into the circumstances of the deaths of ten people and charged Oleg Evstigneev with negligent destruction or damage to property (Article 168 of the Criminal Code) and the production, transportation and sale of goods and services that negligently caused the death of two or more persons (Part 3 of Article 238 of the Criminal Code). The employee of the AGZS, collectively, faced up to ten years in prison.

However, on June 8, the Nizhnevartovsk city court issued an unexpected decision — it completely released Yevstegneev from punishment under Article 168 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation. And under the more severe article 238, the court was limited to four years of probation, with a probation period of 3 years. The city court also recovered 300 thousand rubles of compensation for moral damage and 50 thousand rubles of reimbursement of expenses for a legal representative from the convicted person in favor of only one victim. The claim from the administration of Nizhnevartovsk was left without consideration, but as the city court noted in the verdict, the plaintiff has the right to file a claim against the convicted person in civil proceedings for the entire amount of damage — more than 280 million rubles.

As follows from the press release of the city court, the unexpectedly lenient sentence is due to mitigating circumstances: the age of the defendant - the convict is 64 years old, his state of health and the presence of Oleg Evstegneev's minor dependent child.

However, all these and other arguments of the court did not satisfy the prosecutor's office of the Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug. She intends to appeal the verdict, considering it excessively lenient, and wants to achieve a real term for the defendant.

If people have died, they usually give a decent and realistic sentence, especially if there are children among the dead, lawyer Vyacheslav Vostokov believes.

— In the last few years, they have been severely punished for this, — Vostokov added, — but most often the article is attributed to the management, and not to an ordinary employee, if it is proved that the boss did not inform the employee of the safety regulations. But they can attract both.

Indeed, judicial practice shows that in similar situations, the perpetrator usually gets a real sentence. For example, in the case of the explosion of household gas on Sibirskaya Street in Tomsk in November 2012, the operator of the Sibgazset gas station was sentenced to 4 years in prison in a penal colony. The circumstances were similar — the station was intended only for refueling cars, the cylinder was brought out of the cold into the heat, and there were 3 dead women. The court also ordered the employer company to pay the victims more than 4 million rubles in moral damages.

In the Omsk region, the Sedelnikovsky court sentenced two people — the operator of the gas station and its owner for the explosion of a household cylinder in January 2028, which killed five minor children. The employer received 3.5 years of probation, and the employee received 4 years in a general regime penal colony. However, in the appellate instance, the court sided with the prosecution and the owner of the station was given a real term of 5 years in prison in a general regime penal colony, according to the prosecutor's office of the Omsk region.

"The suspended sentence indicates that the court distinguished the severity of the consequences and the individual degree of criminal responsibility of a particular person, taking into account his lack of direct intent to commit a crime," said Andrei Rybtsov, lawyer at Moscow Legal.

Evstegneev's defense declined to comment to Izvestia until a common position was reached with the principal. It is known that the defendant pleaded not guilty.