A commercial truck driver from Uzbekistan who entered the country through the diversity visa lottery during the Biden administration killed a 21 year old college soccer goalkeeper in Ohio over the weekend. The kicker? He could only communicate with the officers at the scene using Google Translate. Let that marinate for a second.
Bekhzod Asrarov, 42, rear ended a vehicle on Interstate 71 in Madison County, killing Tobias "Toby" Forsythe, a goalkeeper for the University of Massachusetts at Lowell, according to The American Tribune. When Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers showed up, Asrarov allegedly tried to rip the dashcam off his rig and destroy it, along with three phones and his logging device. Nothing says "I have nothing to hide" quite like frantically smashing every recording device within arm's reach.
Here is the part that should make your blood pressure spike. This man held a commercial driver's license from the state of Ohio. A CDL. Meaning the system looked at a guy who cannot read English road signs or speak to law enforcement without pulling up an app on his phone and said, "Yeah, here are the keys to an 80,000 pound missile. Have fun out there."
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy summed it up on X: "We cannot let truckers like Asrarov, who can't read our road signs or speak to law enforcement, drive 80,000-pound rigs on America's highways." Hard to argue with that unless you enjoy playing Russian roulette every time you merge onto the interstate.
Forsythe was an economics major who had played at Shawnee State, where he started all 17 games during the 2025 season, and Ashland University before joining the UMass Lowell River Hawks in 2026. By all accounts he was exactly the kind of kid you root for.
"He never looked for shortcuts and never expected anything to be given to him. He simply wanted the opportunity to earn it," head coach Kyle Zenoni said. UMass Lowell athletic director Lynn Coutts called the department "heartbroken," according to Fox News, adding that Forsythe "left a meaningful impact and will always be remembered as a cherished member of our UMass Lowell family."
This is not an isolated incident either. Just a week ago, a Haitian national who had allegedly been ordered to leave the country was charged in the death of a Pennsylvania State Police trooper during a commercial vehicle inspection on Interstate 81. The Trump administration has since ramped up efforts to revoke CDLs from immigrant truckers who cannot demonstrate English proficiency, which honestly feels like the bare minimum when you are handing someone a license to operate a vehicle that weighs more than a fighter jet.
A young man with a bright future is gone because the system that was supposed to keep dangerous drivers off the road decided that speaking the language on the signs you are supposed to follow was optional. Somewhere along the way, common sense took an exit ramp and never came back.
Read more American news stories at: The American Tribune
