Even though a public defender was provided to driver Garnik Harutyunyan of the Armenian passenger bus that crashed Tuesday in Tula Oblast (province) of Russia, the King Deluxe company—which the bus belongs to—plans to hire an attorney.

The Embassy of Armenia in Moscow informed the abovementioned to Armenian News-NEWS.am.

At Wednesday’s court hearing, a Russian public defender had defended Harutyunyan because it was a non-working day in Russia, and therefore King Deluxe proprietor Artur Harutyunyan was unable to hire an attorney.

“Artur Harutyunyan, who is in Tula, informed that on [Thursday,] November 5, he is going to get a lawyer involved in the case,” the Embassy representatives said.

The Tula provincial court on Wednesday handed down a two-month arrest for Garnik Harutyunyan.

A passenger bus, which was traveling from Moscow to Yerevan, had the accident on Tuesday at around 2:10am local time, in the Uzlovsky District in Tula Oblast, Russia.

There were 59 passengers on the bus, but no children were among them.

There are reports on eight casualties and 35 injured, and the latter were taken to the three nearby hospitals.

A technical malfunction in the vehicle is considered a probable cause of this tragedy. But there is also a possibility that the bus driver might have fallen asleep behind the steering wheel.