Levon Barseghyan, the head of the Gyumri Journalists’ Club Asparez, visited Georgia yesterday to investigate what had really happened in the village of Zhdanovka. As it is known, 79-year-old Rosa Nersisyan died in a car crash in this village 3 days ago, and newly-elected mayor of Gyumri Samvel Balasanyan’s name was mentioned in this story.
Let us note that Mr. Balasanyan has a brewery in Javakhk. Levon Barseghyan said the following during a conversation with www.aravot.am: “I was very interested in that story; it was allegedly related to our mayor. I went there early yesterday morning, met with the relatives of the deceased and went to the police stations in the village of Garelovka and in the town of Ninotsminda. I talked with police officers, took a few shots, returned and am now writing an article about this. The car that ran the woman down was a Jeep, Hyundai Santa Fe, the license plates were taken off and the hood was deformed. I carefully examined the scene. The old woman was а 79-year-old frail woman; she was most probably crossing the road from her son’s house to her house. The accident happened at 7 p.m., it was dark and the passing cortege was comprised of 3 or 4 cars. One of the villagers said 3, another one said 4, and it
turns out that she was hit by that car’s hood; the body outline was drawn on the ground with a piece of chalk. The car dragged the woman for 26 meters and braked. This is roughly what happened. As for who was driving the car, no one of the villagers said that it had been Samvel Balasanyan, they said that officials had been in that car; this is what they said. I talked with many people, 36 hours had passed since the accident, that woman’s funeral was not yesterday, as some news agencies informed, but today. They explained that they were waiting for the relatives, the sons to come back from guest work. And the car is outside the Garelovka village police department. At both police stations, I was told that they couldn’t give interviews, there was a news agency in Tbilisi, I had to talk with them. The chief of police in Ninotsminda said the same thing.”
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According to Levon Barseghyan, the accident happened not while going to Akhalkalak, but while returning from Akhalkalak. “According to the villagers, it was the opposite of what news agencies are telling. The accident happened on the returning lane of the highway, so if we look at the map, it is on the Western lane of the highway, the highway is from North to South, so it happened on the lane that is used to return from Akhalkalak. The Zhdanov village is the first village after Bavra, when you cross the border, that village, those people’s house is 2 kilometers away. I inquired a lot, no one confirmed that it was the mayor; they said it was a man working at the Akhalkalak brewery. I asked whether the car had left, they said no, the driver had gotten out immediately, had waited, and they had come and drawn the outline. In a nutshell, there was no case of escape, they registered everything properly; the dead body’s outline is still on the ground. This is all I managed to find out,” the head of the Asparez club said.
Mr. Barseghyan also talked with the Georgian border guards of Armenian descent who said that they had been working there for a few years, Samvel Balasanyan had crossed there for 3-4 years, but they had never seen him behind the wheel. “This is the information I have gotten or a short personal inquiry I have conducted. I really was very interested whether all this was grounded or not, those who wrote that had better substantiate it, because ‘according to reliable sources,’ ‘as reliable sources informed us,’ it is a thing of the past, the city hall is also denying, at the end of the day, where is the truth? I found out yesterday that no journalist had gone there, no one had been to the village, they had better go, see on the spot, enter the house of the deceased, talk with the relatives, but no such thing has happened,” the experienced journalist rebukes.
Let us note that according to the official version, 32-year-old Zorik Petrosyan was behind the wheel. And according to some information, the latter has worked at the Javakhk brewery.
Nune Arevshatyan
