Irina Lazareva was walking through an underground passage on Chokolivskyi Boulevard around 5 p.m. when a Mercedes rushed in at full speed. The woman worked at a kindergarten and left behind a son. Her colleagues learned about her death from the news.
«Irina was a kind, sincere, and compassionate person who was respected by colleagues and loved by children. Her premature death became a heavy loss for our entire team»
— from a statement by the kindergarten where Lazareva worked
Three other people died that day along with her: Senior Lieutenant of Police Dmytro Bondarchuk (23 years old) and Lieutenant Denys Budchenko (21 years old) — both while performing their duties — and 12-year-old Hryhoriy Hlushych, who had just completed sixth grade and dreamed of becoming a programmer. Three more people were hospitalized.
Who Was Behind the Wheel
According to the investigation and media reports, the driver of the Mercedes-Benz was Pavlo Pleshivtsev, born in 1976, a resident of Kherson region. At the time of the accident, he was working as a taxi driver and fulfilling an order — there was a passenger in the car who was hospitalized.
According to the prosecutor's office, Pleshivtsev was held administratively liable 10 times since the beginning of 2025 for traffic violations, including 5 times for speeding. According to other data, the total number of recorded violations reaches 39, of which 18 occurred in 2025 alone. In addition, he was involved in four accidents, two of which occurred in 2026.
Examination confirmed that the driver was sober at the time of the accident. The car could not handle the curve on a rounded section of the road and veered off the roadway.
What He Faces
Pleshivtsev was notified of suspicion under Part 3 of Article 286 of the Criminal Code — violation of road safety rules that resulted in the death of multiple people. The penalty is up to 10 years in prison and a driving ban of up to 3 years. The court remanded him in custody for 60 days — until August 3, 2026 — without the right to bail.
The suspect's interests are represented by a lawyer who has already been called «notorious» in Kyiv legal circles.
A Systemic Failure, Not a Tragic Accident
This accident is not about chance. It is about the fact that a person with dozens of recorded violations and four previous accidents had a valid driver's license, the right to carry passengers, and complete freedom of movement throughout the city. Administrative fines, it appears, did not stop him.
If the court sentences Pleshivtsev to actual prison time, it will set a precedent for cases involving systematic violators. But the question remains open: will this tragedy lead to a mechanism for automatically revoking licenses after reaching a critical threshold of violations — or will the case once again end with a sentence without any changes to the system?
