Officials and locals meet in Podlesnoye, Russia. Photo: Vzglyad-info

Roughly 200 people gathered to demand the eviction of local Roma families from a village in Russia’s Saratov region in a spontaneous protest on Tuesday, following a fatal traffic accident involving a 15-year-old boy and a Roma driver, local media has reported.

The fatal collision occurred in the village of Podlesnoye at about 9:30am local time on Tuesday when a Lada vehicle being driven by a member of the local Roma community struck a teenager, who was driving a moped, killing him.

According to Vzglyad-info, a local media outlet which first reported the incident, the driver was detained at the scene and later placed under criminal investigation.

In the hours following the announcement of the boy’s death, demonstrators converged outside the village administration building, accusing the local Roma community of long-standing disorder and criminality, including the sale of drugs, driving without driver’s licences, and evading military service.

Thereafter, Vzglyad-info reports, district head Dmitry Romanov arrived at the protest and attempted to calm the crowd, along with the district’s chief prosecutor.

Romanov promised to investigate the community for alleged violations of migration law and pledged to provide a list of Roma men from the village who had participated in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, while asking locals to avoid turning the incident into “something interethnic”.

Following the unrest, most of the Roma community fled Podlesnoye, according to Vzglyad-info.

Elsewhere in Russia, a physically disabled Roma teenager was sentenced to nearly 10 years in prison at the end of May for the fatal stabbing of a fellow teenager — a case that sparked wider anti-Roma riots and mass detentions in the town of Korkino, in the Urals, last October.