Moscow cabbie fell asleep on the wheel

THE suspect in a taxi crash near Red Square that injured two Mexican World Cup fans and six other pedestrians told interrogators that he fell asleep at the wheel, Moscow police said yesterday.

City police released a video of an interrogation session with a man identified as the Kyrgyz taxi driver, in which he says he briefly dozed off and accidentally hit the gas.

The man says he hadn’t slept in 20 hours and wasn’t drunk, and ran away after the accident because he was afraid that angry bystanders would kill him. He was later detained.

Videos circulating on Russian social media and some news websites after the incident showed the taxi veering onto the sidewalk on Saturday and striking pedestrians.

The accident took place on Ilinka Street, about 200 meters from Red Square and Moscow’s famous GUM shopping arcade, an area popular with tourists.

Viktoria Geranovich, who works nearby and filmed the fleeing driver on her phone, described her shock at the crash. “I called the ambulance right away,” she said. “I was trembling. It is not a thing you see every day, when a taxi drives right into the crowd.”

Moscow police would not comment on whether the crash would affect security measures for the World Cup, which is being held in 11 Russian cities over the next month. Among the security concerns has been the possible use of vehicles as weapons.

A spokeswoman for FIFA said that the World Cup organizers regretted what happened, but referred security questions to Moscow authorities.