This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Russian prosecutors have opened an attempted murder investigation after a businessman threw a pedestrian who touched his car into a canal in St Petersburg.

The pedestrian, reportedly handicapped, “accidentally touched the Audi of the 30-year-old businessman with his foot”, prosecutors said in a statement. The driver “got out of his car and punched him in the face before throwing him over the railings into the canal,” the statement said.

The victim, 44, managed to clamber out of the water and was taken to hospital. The driver was later detained and faces 11 years in jail.

Video footage of the incident recorded by a dashcam on a passing vehicle sparked huge criticism and was broadcast on Russian television.

Recent road rage incidents in Russia captured on the country’s increasingly ubiquitous dashcams have included an angry priest chasing a man in a provincial city after he blocked the priest’s expensive sedan.