American man sentenced to 9 years in Russia for drunken conduct - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15197481
An American man who was in Russia was sentenced to 9 years of prison for drunken conduct, after he passed out after a night of drinking and the police were called to drive him to a hospital. The police claim that while in the police car he became belligerent during the ride and tugged on the driver's arm, making the car swerve and endangering the lives of the police officers. They also claim he elbowed one of the other officers in the car. The police have presented a jacket with a torn arm as evidence that he tugged on the driver.

The man's Russian girlfriend claims that she and the driver of the car she was in were following right behind the police car and did not at any time see it swerve, as police claim.

The man had been celebrating a night out with his friends and his girlfriend's co-workers. At some point on the ride home the man appeared very ill, his lips were blue, and it appeared he needed urgent medical help. The driver of the car, who was a co-worker of the woman, called the police, who put the man in the back of their car and then drove him to a police station.

The man claims he has no recollection of the events from that night.

Russian judge sentences former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed to 9 years in prison (nbcnews.com)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russ ... 9-n1235169

Is this an excessive prison sentence for what was likely drunken misconduct?
There could be the possibility this man's drink was spiked with something without his knowledge that caused his erratic behavior.

The man's name is Trevor Reed, from Texas, and his girlfriend is Alina Tsybulnik.
#15197483
I am thinking maybe the man did something else to the officers inside that car that angered them, and then they lied or exaggerated about him endangering their safety to get back at him and try to make sure he got a lot of punishment. Of course once a lie is told, the police cannot backtrack on the story, or it is an admission that they lied before.

It's also possible the man might have taken some illegal drug at the party that ended up leading to his illness and belligerent behavior. I am thinking maybe the reason that girl's co-worker called the police was that the man was already acting belligerent and the driver did not want to have to deal with him.


Apparently the man has gone on a hunger strike to protest his excessive prison sentence and his treatment in prison.
Reed has been in solitary confinement for nearly three months now, and he has not been able to contact his family in nearly four months. He has been in Russian custody since August 2019, sentenced to nine years last July for assaulting two police officers. The U.S. embassy in Moscow has called the trial absurd, as the two officers struggled to recall the alleged incident in court hearings and contradicted themselves repeatedly.

Former US Marine detained by Russia goes on hunger strike to protest treatment, article from November 8, 2021
Last edited by Puffer Fish on 09 Nov 2021 05:27, edited 1 time in total.
#15197484
Puffer Fish wrote:An American man who was in Russia was sentenced to 9 years of prison for drunken conduct, after he passed out after a night of drinking and the police were called to drive him to a hospital. The police claim that while in the police car he became belligerent during the ride and tugged on the driver's arm, making the car swerve and endangering the lives of the police officers. They also claim he elbowed one of the other officers in the car. The police have presented a jacket with a torn arm as evidence that he tugged on the driver.

The man's Russian girlfriend claims that she and the driver of the car she was in were following right behind the police car and did not at any time see it swerve, as police claim.

The man had been celebrating a night out with his friends and his girlfriend's co-workers. At some point on the ride home the man appeared very ill, his lips were blue, and it appeared he needed urgent medical help. The driver of the car, who was a co-worker of the woman, called the police, who put the man in the back of their car and then drove him to a police station.

The man claims he has no recollection of the events from that night.

Russian judge sentences former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed to 9 years in prison (nbcnews.com)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/russ ... 9-n1235169

Is this an excessive prison sentence for what was likely drunken misconduct?
There could be the possibility this man's drink was spiked with something without his knowledge that caused his erratic behavior.

The man's name is Trevor Reed, from Texas, and his girlfriend is Alina Tsybulnik.

The Russian police are fine upstanding gentlemen who would never lie or fabricate evidence against someone in their custody.

....

:excited:
#15197486
It sounds like the man was blacked out drunk and delirious.

That happened to me once, at the Beijing airport right before I hopped on a flight to San Francisco, I grabbed a bottle of 130 proof baijiu at a gift shop, and drank almost all of it on the plane, after drinking before the flight. And drinking on the flight (before they cut me off, but then I just went back to the baijiu).

I came to in an emergency room, strapped to a bed. I thought I was in the dungeons of the San Francisco airport, and the straps were kinda weird, part of the hand straps were leather, and I was vainly reaching with my teeth to try to unbind them.

There were these three security guards that had been hanging around, and even giving me a little shit here and there, when I finally got released.

It seemed like I was raving about how I have to get to Oregon (I didn't remember it, but was apparently in a rage or something when I came in), because one of the guys was saying like, "You gotta keep it cool right now, you want to get back to Oregon right?" He also asked me something like, "so are you gonna go tell all of them up in Oregon how we run you through like this down here?" (Or something to the effect, though he said it in an almost sad way, like he didn't want to be thought of in a bad light, and I said "yup".)

He said one more thing though, something like, "You gotta take it easy. Yelling at cops?"

I assure you, I have no memory whatsoever of yelling at any cops, I was fully blacked out, it was like they apparently carried me off the plain and ambulanced me to the hospital, and I don't remember anything between drinking the baijiu on the plain and coming to strapped to a hospital bed.

This sounds like a like situation. The guy was blacked out, delirious, and well, you might say out of his mind. He was probably slamming hard liquor, and that shit happens like that.

In my case, the only silver lining was, they had my carry on luggage there in the hospital, and I still had a few good sips of baijiu left in the bottle.
#15197487
Crantag wrote:It sounds like the man was blacked out drunk and delirious.

That happened to me once, at the Beijing airport right before I hopped on a flight to San Francisco, I grabbed a bottle of 130 proof baijiu at a gift shop, and drank almost all of it on the plane, after drinking before the flight. And drinking on the flight (before they cut me off, but then I just went back to the baijiu).

I came to in an emergency room, strapped to a bed. I thought I was in the dungeons of the San Francisco airport, and the straps were kinda weird, part of the hand straps were leather, and I was vainly reaching with my teeth to try to unbind them.

There were these three security guards that had been hanging around, and even giving me a little shit here and there, when I finally got released.

It seemed like I was raving about how I have to get to Oregon (I didn't remember it, but was apparently in a rage or something when I came in), because one of the guys was saying like, "You gotta keep it cool right now, you want to get back to Oregon right?" He also asked me something like, "so are you gonna go tell all of them up in Oregon how we run you through like this down here?" (Or something to the effect, though he said it in an almost sad way, like he didn't want to be thought of in a bad light, and I said "yup".)

He said one more thing though, something like, "You gotta take it easy. Yelling at cops?"

I assure you, I have no memory whatsoever of yelling at any cops, I was fully blacked out, it was like they apparently carried me off the plain and ambulanced me to the hospital, and I don't remember anything between drinking the baijiu on the plain and coming to strapped to a hospital bed.

This sounds like a like situation. The guy was blacked out, delirious, and well, you might say out of his mind. He was probably slamming hard liquor, and that shit happens like that.

In my case, the only silver lining was, they had my carry on luggage there in the hospital, and I still had a few good sips of baijiu left in the bottle.

It probably wouldn't be a good idea to visit Russia @Crantag. Seriously.
#15197495
Crantag wrote:Reverse psychology?

I have always wanted to visit Russia, actually.

I have two graduate school buddies from Kamchatka.

Maybe you just gave me a little nudge in the right direction, to making that happen. :)

:D
#15224496
An update to the story. Trevor Reed has been freed after Russia and the US agreed to a prisoner exchange.

Reed had been detained in Russia since 2019 and was released in April 2022. He had been detained in Russia for nearly three years.

Reed's father described "horrible, dungeon-type of conditions" that his son had endured. "If you saw the video of him getting out of the FSB van today, you can see he's very thin. To us, he looked frail," Joey Reed said.

His release comes after months of effort by the US government, officials said, and was particularly urgent given concerns about Reed's health.

He was traded for Russian national Konstantin Yaroshenko, who had been sentenced in the US to 20 years in prison on cocaine smuggling charges.
Yaroshenko is a Russian pilot who had been detained in Liberia by undercover US Drug Enforcement Agency agents on May 28, 2010, and brought to the US.
#15224717
wat0n wrote:He was arrested on November 2021? This timing is quite interesting, given what's happened with regards to Russia until now...

It’s always a good idea to lock up a stupid Westerner on trumped up charges every now and again. You never know when they might come in useful…. :)
#15229000
It sounds like there was pressure from higher up to have him arrested. Possibly to take him as a political prisoner, and use what he had previously done as an excuse to hold him. Russia did end up trading him in a prisoner exchange.


On the drive home, Reed became unmanageable, according to his girlfriend, Alina Tsybulnik, and jumped out of the car. Unable to get him back in and fearing for his safety, Tsybulnik and her friends said they called the police to ask them to take Reed to a drunk tank to sober up.

Two police officers agreed and after taking Reed to the station told his girlfriend to come pick him up in the morning. Reed, who says the last thing he remembers was being in the park, said when he woke up in the lobby of the police station the next morning initially he was free to leave.

But as he waited for his girlfriend to arrive to pick him up, a shift change occurred and the police brass on the next shift decided to hold him. Then, he said, agents from Russia’s powerful domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service or FSB, arrived and interrogated him.

"I pretty much knew as soon as I saw FSB agents where this case was headed,” said Reed.

"The main thing that they wanted to know was about my military service," Reed added. "They didn't ask me at all, not one question about if I had committed a crime, if I had done something wrong. They did not ask me anything related to that at all. They wanted to know about my military service primarily."

After the agents' arrival, the police abruptly accused Reed of assaulting the police officers who had taken him the night before, charging him with endangering their lives.
He was arrested on the spot.

'I fought': Trevor Reed speaks out on how he survived nearly 3 years in a Russian prison - ABC News, May 22, 2022, by Patrick Reevell, James Hill, Bill Hutchinson
https://abcnews.go.com/US/fought-trevor ... d=84806555
#15229005
Yeah, Reed’s story sounds very plausible. All the same, he should have known better than to get blind drunk in public in Russia. That wasn’t a good idea during the Soviet period, and it’s still not a good idea. You’re not in Kansas any more, Toto…. :lol:
#15229172
@Puffer Fish, or any country, for that matter. Many countries don't take drug offenses lightly, whereas where you're from might have legalized it.

Check out the laws, and culture, of a country a bit before you travel there, so you know which behaviors to avoid.

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