A6 The Region The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019
lax? Although the water was
nearly 70 degrees, there were
practically no swimmers. This
summer’s Cape getaway just
isn’t the same for many visitors.
“We’re not swimming like
we do in Rhode Island,” Glennis
Bohn told her 10-year-old
daughter as they surveyed
Whitecrest Beach from a sand
dune above it.
The Bohns had planned to
bike along the road and stop to
cool off in the water, but after
spotting seals just feet from the
shore, they were rethinking
their plans. Seals often mean
that sharks are close behind.
“There’s no reason to buy
that beach pass for $60,” Bohn
said, shrugging.
Other vacationers found
that they weren’t having the In-
stagram-worthy trips they had
planned. Smith had texted a
friend back home a classic jeal-
ousy-inducing beach photo,
showing her lounging in shal-
low water in the bay. What are
you doing today? she teased her
friend, who was still at work.
“Yeah, until a shark eats
you,” her friend shot back.
Smith was still enjoying the
beach, but neither she nor her
children would be going into
the water. If they were older,
she said, “it would be harder to
say no.” After all, one has cer-
tain expectations of a beach.
Vacationers and officials
have been on high alert since
last year, when Arthur Medici, a
26-year-old who was boogie
boarding, was bitten by a shark
off Wellfleet and died from his
injuries. He was the first person
killed in Massachusetts by a
shark since 1936.
In response, officials installed
bright yellow 911 call boxes and
medical kits with blood-clotting
bandages in beach parking lots,
and hosted “Stop the Bleed”
trainings for residents. The At-
lantic White Shark Conservancy
advises beachgoers to swim
close to the shore, in groups, and
to avoid seals. By the lifeguard
stand, a purple flag featuring a
shark warned visitors of the po-
tential danger.
Some visitors were gamely
trying to incorporate the shark
scare into their vacation memo-
ries. At the entrance to Cahoon
Hollow, a stream of families
took photos in front of a
“WARNING” sign featuring a
ferocious great white shark
uSHARKS
Continued from Page A
with its teeth bared. “Oh,
there’s sharks!” cried a little boy
upon seeing the sign, as he
dragged a boogie board larger
than he was down the dune.
Joey Armenti remained opti-
mistic that the sharks were gen-
erally good for business. He was
selling “Cape Cod Shark Patrol”
T-shirts; $1 from each sale
would go to the Atlantic White
Shark Conservancy.
The sharks “bring people
down here,” he said. “I think it’s
cool.”
As he chatted about his
hopes for creating a line of hats,
a State Police helicopter
whirred ominously overhead,
scanning the water.
Other beachgoers still in-tended to brave the water —
they just wouldn’t swim too
deep.
“When seals are here, you
gotta run away from them,” said
Elliott Bugala, 8, who’s some-
thing of a shark expert, though
he has never seen one in the
wild. “I read a book about who
would win, a tiger shark or a
hammerhead. It compared
their stats,” he said.
For about an hour, Elliott
and his sister were the only two
people daring enough to get in
the water along a stretch of Ca-
hoon beach; they were on boo-
gie boards, kicking their feet
and splashing in the shallows.
Their father, Paul Bugala, 43,
watched keenly from the sand.They had been visiting the Cape
since before Elliott was born,
and they knew the deal with
shark sightings.
Some vacationers were be-
ing extra vigilant. With all the
attention on peril in the water,
a person could be forgiven for
seeing snouts and fins and slip-
pery creatures everywhere.
“Some people mistake birds
or whales” for sharks, said Ellie
Hartmann, a lifeguard at Ca-
hoon Hollow. A few miles down
the shore, Anne Beckstram
scanned the waves with a pair
of green Canon binoculars.
“There was a fin out here,
but I guess they’re saying it’s a
sunfish,” she said.
From afar, a group of swim-mers with their paddle boards
looked suspiciously like a pod
of seals, their heads bobbing up
and down in the waves.
Ultimately, maybe the best
strategy for relaxing in the zone
of a predator is simple math.
“You have a better chance of
hitting the lottery than getting
bitten by a shark,” said Karen
Treadup, who was tanning by
the water’s edge. She’s not par-
ticularly worried.
But she will still check the
Sharktivity app every day of her
vacation.Zoe Greenberg can be reached at
[email protected].
Follow her on Twitter
@zoegberg.“My son would probably be
alive today if they did their job,”
said the elder Mazza, a former
Marine who bought his son his
first motorcycle and taught him
how to ride it.
Mazza’s daughter, Brittany,
said she was bracing for allega-
tions of impaired driving by
Zhukovskyy.
“I’m not surprised by this.
We were just kind of waiting for
it to happen,” she said.
An inspector found 24 viola-
tions of federal motor carrier
safety regulations involving
Zhukovskyy and the vehicle, ac-
cording to the report. The report
linked at least 14 of the viola-
tions — such as flat tires, faulty
brakes, and inoperable lights —
to damage that the truck and
trailer may have sustained dur-
ing the collision. It’s unclear if
any of the alleged deficiencies
existed before the crash.
Regulators also cited Zhuk-
ovskyy for inattentive driving, a
lane violation, driving under the
influence, and failing to main-
tain a log book of his travels.
A spokesman for the Federal
Motor Carrier Safety Adminis-
tration declined to comment,
saying the agency doesn’t dis-
cuss crashes publicly. The
Globe obtained the inspection
report through a public records
request.
“This kid should have never
been operating a commercial
motor vehicle. There’s no ques-
tion in my mind,” said attorney
John Haymond, who repre-
sents Joshua Morin, a Marine
veteran from Dalton who was
injured in the collision.
A spokeswoman for Gover-
nor Charlie Baker declined to
comment and referred ques-
tions to the Department of
Transportation, which oversees
uDRIVER
Continued from Page A
the Registry.
“The RMV’s failures are to-
tally unacceptable and the ad-
ministration hopes that the
families who lost loved ones in
this terrible tragedy can begin
to find some solace as justice is
sought in this case,” said Patrick
Marvin, a MassDOT spokes-
man.
Zhukovskyy, who has a
lengthy record of traffic and im-
pairment charges, walked away
from the crash uninjured. He
was arrested three days later
and has pleaded not guilty to
seven counts of negligent homi-
cide.
The New Hampshire attor-
ney general’s office, National
Transportation Safety Board,
New Hampshire State Police,
and Coos County, N.H., prose-
cutors are investigating.
Deputy Attorney General
Jane Young declined to com-
ment on the federal report, cit-
ing the ongoing investigation
and prosecution. Lawyers for
Zhukovskyy didn’t respond to
requests for comment.
Peter Knudson, an NTSB
spokesman, said the agency is
conducting its own investiga-
tion and doesn’t comment on
reports prepared by outside or-
ganizations.
Zhukovskyy was driving for
Westfield Transport, which had
hired him three days earlier.
The company was on a ship-
ping assignment for Berlin City
Ford Lincoln in Gorham, N.H.,
at the time of the crash, the re-
port said.
The victims were in New
Hampshire for an event orga-
nized by the Jarheads Motorcy-
cle Club, established by Marine
veterans.
Days after the crash, Massa-
chusetts officials acknowledged
that Zhukovskyy should have
been stripped of his commer-cial license weeks earlier after
he refused to take a chemical
sobriety test on May 11 in East
Windsor, Conn. Police there ar-
rested him for allegedly operat-
ing a motor vehicle under the
influence of alcohol or drugs.
Connecticut’s registry alerted
Massachusetts of the refusal via
electronic and paper mail noti-
fications.
Zhukovskyy’s troubled driv-
ing history dates back to April
2012 when at age 16 he was cit-
ed for a crash in West Spring-
field. At the time, Zhukovskyy
had yet to obtain a learner’s
permit.
Since then, he has accumu-
lated driving violations and ar-
rests in at least six states, re-
cords show. He spent three
months in a residential rehabil-
itation program in Bristol, Pa.,
to address his struggles with al-
cohol, cocaine, and heroin, ac-
cording to the former director
of the program.
As Massachusetts officials
looked into their failure to sus-
pend Zhukovskyy’s license, they
learned the Registry had ne-
glected for years to process no-
tifications from other states
about traffic violations by localdrivers and didn’t have a sys-
tem of its own for sending such
alerts.
The Registry’s lapse prompt-
ed Erin Deveney, the agency’s
registrar, to resign in late June.
At an oversight hearing
Tuesday, state lawmakers
learned that Registry officials
had been warned in March that
nearly 13,000 alerts from other
states about law-breaking driv-
ers were piling up within a divi-
sion known as the Merit Rating
Board.
Reached Wednesday eve-
ning, the owner of Westfield
Transport said he wasn’t aware
that Zhukovskyy had been
charged in Connecticut with
operating under the influence
in May because it wasn’t listed
on his driving history.
Dartanyan Gasanov said he
knew Zhukovskyy had been ar-
rested for drunken driving in
2013 but let him work for West-
field Transport anyway.
“We are cooperating,” Ga-
sanov said.
He said he hasn’t seen the
federal inspection report.
“It’s really hard to talk about
this,” he said. “It’s very hard to
sleep at night.”Last week, Attorney General
Maura Healey announced she
was investigating Westfield
Transport. The business dis-
banded on July 3 and faces a
civil lawsuit from Morin and his
wife, state records show.
Gasanov also owns East
Transport LLC, a trucking busi-
ness in West Springfield with
one truck and one driver, feder-
al records show. The company
appears to still be in business.
Following the fatal New
Hampshire crash, a federal in-
spector spent more than two
hours examining the wreckage,
the report said.
A fire erupted after the colli-
sion, damaging the brakes on
the pickup truck and trailer,
and burning battery cables and
melting headlamps, turn sig-
nals, and tires, the report said.
The suspension systems on
the truck and trailer were also
affected.
On June 26, five more in-
spections were conducted on
commercial vehicles operated
by Westfield Transport, federal
records show.
Three inspections occurred
on Western Avenue in West
Springfield, and two others
were conducted in Springfield.
An inspector cited one driver
for not having a medical certifi-
cate. During a different inspec-
tion, a vehicle with brake prob-
lems was ordered to be taken
out of service, records show.
Mazza’s father said he is try-
ing to come to terms with his
son’s death.
“Nothing’s going to bring my
son back,” he said. “I got a bro-
ken heart. There’s no doubt
about it.”Laura Crimaldi can be reached
at [email protected].
Follow her on Twitter
@lauracrimaldi.OntheCape,it’ssun,sand,andsharks
DriverinfatalN.H.crashwashigh,reportsays
MIRANDA THOMPSON VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
The report found 24 violations of federal safety regulations
involving Volodymyr Zhukovskyy and the pickup truck.PHOTOS BY DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
Few people were in the
water at Head of the
Meadow Beach in Truro.
Five-year-old Max Smith
was ready for anything at
Cahoon Hollow Beach in
Wellfleet, while lifeguard
Ellie Hartmann kept watch.death, “The world is a little less
beautiful today.”
Kennedy Hill was a student
at Boston College and was slat-
ed to graduate in 2020, a
school spokesman said. Her fa-
ther, Paul Michael Hill, was
one of four people falsely con-
victed in the 1974 Irish Repub-
lican Army bombings of two
pubs.
Kennedy Hill, who is listed
in Deerfield Academy’s class of
2016, wrote about dealing with
depression in that school’s stu-
dent newspaper in February of
that year.
“I have experienced a lot of
stigma surrounding mental
health on Deerfield’s campus,”
she wrote. “As students, we
have the power to end that im-
mediately.”
In a statement, a spokes-
woman for the Cape & Islands
district attorney’s office said
Barnstable police responded to
a home on Marchant Avenue in
Hyannis Port “for a reported
unattended death.” The matter
is being investigated by Barn-
stable police and State Police
detectivesassignedtothedis-
trict attorney’s office.
A call for assistance at 28
Marchant Ave. came in at 2:
p.m., said Hyannis Fire Lieu-
tenant David Webb.
“28 Merchant for an over-
dose,” a recording of a police
scanner conversation archivedby Broadcastify said.
An individual was trans-
ported to Cape Cod Hospital,
Webb said, declining to pro-
vide additional information.
Barnstable police and State
Police deferred comment to the
district attorney’s office.
The Kennedy compound on
Nantucket Sound, which once
served as the summer White
House of President John F.
Kennedy, contains several resi-
dential properties now owned
by extended family members.
Kennedy Hill’s death is the
latest tragedy suffered by the
Kennedy family, one of the na-
tion’s most storied political
clans.
President Kennedy’s assas-
sination in 1963 was followed
nearly five years later by the as-
sassination of Robert F. Kenne-
dy.
In 1984, David Kennedy,
one of Robert and Ethel’s 11
children, died of a drug over-
dose in Florida. In 1997, an-
other son, Michael, was killed
in a skiing accident in Aspen,
Colo.
John F. Kennedy Jr., son of
the late president and his wife,
Jacqueline, was killed along
with his wife and sister-in-law,
when the plane he was piloting
crashed off the coast of Mar-
tha’s Vineyard in July 1999.
The compound has been the
scene of countless family gath-
erings, in good times and bad.
In 2009, Senator Edward M.
Kennedy was mourned there
after his death from brain can-
cer.
On Thursday night, two po-
lice officers were stationed out-
side the sprawling waterfront
properties. Neighbors walked
their dogs and kids chatted on
a private pier. The only sign
that something was amiss was
the throng of TV trucks sitting
in a residential parking lot.Material from the Associated
Press was used in this report.
Sofia Saric can be reached
[email protected]uKENNEDY FAMILY
Continued from Page ARFKkin
diesof
apparent
overdose
EVAN AGOSTINI/GETTY IMAGES
Saoirse Kennedy Hill was
seen with her mother,
Courtney Kennedy Hill,
in 2006.