Lawyer files cassation complaint, demands six year sentence in Vardan Petrosyan case
Ruben Baloyan, the legal representative of the Hakobyan family, has filed an appeal to the Court of Cassation, disputing the verdict in a car accident case involving actor Vardan Petrosyan in which two sixteen-year-old boys were killed and four others were injured. Baloyan requests the Court to review the ruling of a lower court and send Petrosyan to 6 years in prison and stripped of his driving license for three years and not two as the Kotayk Regional Court declared. The prosecutor also demands that the actor pay 8 million drams [in compensation] for the treatment of Tatevik Hakobyan, one of the four people injured in the accident. Earlier, the Court of Appeals rejected Baloyan's appeal. Vardan Petrosyan was taken to jail in connection with the deadly road accident in October 2013 in which his BMW collided with another vehicle, Niva, on the Yeghvard-Yerevan highway. Two passengers of the Niva were killed in the crash. Petrosyan himself was among the injured people who were hospitalized that night. The actor later declared that he would not run away from justice and was ready to bear responsibility if found guilty as charged. In January 2015, the Court of General Jurisdiction of Kotayk region sentenced Vardan Petrosyan to five years in prison on murder charges for his involvement in a deadly road accident that left two [16-year-old] boys killed and four others injured. The prosecutor lodged an appeal to a higher court demanding a sentence of six years for Petrosyan.
