Moscow crash:Russian police will this morning open an investigation into the death of Liam Lawlor, killed in a car crash in Moscow early on Saturday morning.
The Mercedes in which Mr Lawlor travelled is being kept by Moscow police in a secure compound for investigation. Police spokesman Sergei Kovalenko said the Mercedes hit a concrete lamp-post on the Leningrad Shosse, a main highway leading into the city, 23km from the city centre, after midnight. He said Mr Lawlor died in the crash, along with the car driver, named as Ruslan Suliamanov.
Mr Kovalenko, spokesman for the Fourth Police District, said a back seat passenger, a woman, received minor injuries. She was treated afterwards in hospital for concussion. The spokesman said she had given a statement to the police and was not under arrest, but that he had not been given details of who she was.
The woman, understood to be aged 32, last night checked out of a Moscow hotel in which she had been due to stay and could not be found for comment. Mr Lawlor's son Niall said he understood she was very shocked. Under Russian law she is bound to provide evidence at an inquest today. Under the terms of these conditions she was required to remain in her hotel, according to a source.
The bodies of the two men were last night in the morgue at Shkodnia, 40km outside Moscow, awaiting forensic examination. Mr Lawlor's body is expected to be released later today.
A source in Moscow said Mr Lawlor was making his first visit to Moscow and had arrived on a flight from Prague which landed shortly before midnight.
The source said the woman in the car was an assistant and translator from the Prague office with which Mr Lawlor did business, and is Ukrainian. Police were last night unable to confirm this.
The Leningrad Shosse is the normal route in from Moscow's Shermetyevo airport, a wide boulevard which leads directly to the Kremlin. Luggage belonging to Mr Lawlor and the Ukrainian woman is understood to have been found in the car. Whether Mr Suliamanov was a business associate of Mr Lawlor, or a driver, was last night unclear.
Moscow is notorious for traffic accidents, with high-speed smashes common along the great boulevards and Prospects where breaking the speed limit is often routine.