An organizer of a youth adventure game in Russia's Ulyanovsk Region was sentenced to two years in prison for manslaughter of one of the players, a senior assistant in the region's Prosecutor General's Office said on Friday.
Vasily Zima said the court charged Maxim Bubnov of organizing an event that did not meet health or safety standards leading to the negligent death of a 22-year-old law student from the International Slavic Institute in Ulyanovsk.
Bubnov was taken into custody in the courtroom and was also ordered to compensate the family of the deceased in the amount of 800,000 rubles ($26,000).
The popular adventure game, called Dozor in Russia, involves several teams who try to find places in the city based on clues received via the Internet and codes hidden in remote places. Each team also pays an entry fee. Teams are equipped with cars, maps, flashlights, mobile phones, laptop computers and Internet access. The games are usually played at night.
Investigators said that during one of the games played on the night of April 11-12, 2009, the student was killed while searching for a hidden clue. He climbed into the second floor of a transformer substation and was fatally electrocuted under a current of 10,000 volts.
Prosecutors said that Bubnov, trying to attract a larger number of participants, implemented risky tasks that were of great danger to the life and health of the players.
"The game clues were placed on top of power line poles, on the middle of a dam gate on the Sviyaga River, on the top of a stack of a boiler in Dachniy village, and on an ice-covered Ferris wheel in Molodezhniy Park," the prosecutor's office statement said.
Bubnov has organized the adventure games since May 2007.
Dozor (Watch) is a popular urban night game, mostly played in Russia and in some cities in Moldova, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Estonia, and even in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Dubai.
ULYANOVSK, May 7 (RIA Novosti)
