The Eyewitness Account
Per Azatutyun.am reporting at 18:42 on 5 June 2026, Mayr Hayastan representative Sona Aghekyan -- who was on-site as the incident unfolded -- gave the following account: 'Lightning-fast he threw them under the car -- he immediately threw our people under the car, but more injured was that driver, who had got out to try to calm the situation down.' The sequence Aghekyan describes: refusal of leaflet, driver acceleration, multiple campaign workers struck.
One BHK campaign worker was hospitalised. Several others suffered injuries. The setting was a routine closing-week campaign canvassing stop in a residential neighbourhood of Yerevan -- the kind of canvas being conducted by every party on the ballot in the final 72 hours before the vote.
The Police Inversion
The police pre-investigation narrative inverts the sequence Aghekyan describes. Per the same Azatutyun reporting, law-enforcement framing has BHK representatives assaulting the driver first, the driver fleeing the scene in his car, and the campaign workers being struck as the driver fled -- characterised in this version as inadvertent rather than intentional.
Two narratives cannot both be true. Either the driver drove into campaign workers after refusing a leaflet (Aghekyan's account) or campaign workers assaulted the driver and were struck during his flight (police pre-investigation framing). At the time of Azatutyun's reporting, no formal investigation had been opened to test which narrative the physical evidence supports.
Closing-Hours Pattern
The Nerkin Charbakh incident lands in the same 72-hour window as: the Friday-morning raid on Armat Media (Civil Contract-aligned justice action), the Friday-night Republic Square closing rally (Pashinyan's prosecution threats against three opposition leaders), the Friday-night CEC ruling on Strong Armenia deregistration, and the cluster of formal pre-trial detentions ordered Friday (Ashotyan, Beglaryan, Brusov rector). The combined picture is closing-hours opposition pressure across multiple state and street vectors.',
OWL is documenting the Nerkin Charbakh incident with both narratives on the record so that voters, observers, and post-vote investigators can compare what was said in the heat of the moment with what the eventual evidence supports. The eyewitness quote stands; the police inversion stands; the formal investigation, when it happens, will resolve which holds.
Sources: Azatutyun.am, 5 June 2026 18:42 (Aghekyan eyewitness account, police inversion narrative)