The second day of Charlene Casey’s trial took a heavier flip into the heartbreak of the July 2018 crash that killed a toddler, as his mom and the nanny took the stand.
Casey, 67, was charged with vehicular murder following a July 25, 2018, crash. On the day, she allegedly negligently pulled out into a big van that had the right-of-way on the intersection of East Sixth and L streets in South Boston.
The van flung onto the sidewalk, the place a younger nanny walked with 2-year-old Colin McGrath in a stroller and his 4-year-old sister.
Their mom, a physician, was working at Massachusetts General Hospital. Her first notification was complicated, Dr. Kerri McGrath testified Thursday afternoon. She left work, received in her automobile. Talked to her husband, unsure of what to say. Then received a medical official on the cellphone.
“I knew he was dead then,” Kerri McGrath recalled, her face visibly screwed in ache for a second earlier than she continued. “There’s a voice you use.”
The physician was not answering her questions, she mentioned, and attempting to maintain her calm. She was conversant in the observe.
“I said, ‘I know what you’re doing,’” she continued. “And he said, ‘If you know what I’m doing, you know why I’m doing it.’”
Just a pair docs had been doing gentle, “courtesy” CPR by the point she reached her son. After verifying there was nothing else they might do, she informed them to cease.
McGrath left briefly to see her injured however alive daughter. She had her priest pray over Colin and despatched him to sit down together with her daughter.
And then sat within the empty room for hours, she mentioned, holding her son for “as long as (she) could.”
Following her testimony — with audible crying all through the courtroom — the choose rigorously warned jurors off of deciding a verdict primarily based on emotion, reminding them “Sympathy, emotion have a place everywhere but a deliberation room.”
Tracey Lewis, the McGrath’s nanny, additionally delivered emotional testimony, starting to cry instantly as she took the stand.
She recalled the moments because the van “catapulted,” screaming on the driver to again the car off Colin, and speaking to the toddler, “trying to get him to focus on (her),” till assist got here.
She hasn’t ever walked down that road once more, she mentioned.
Thursday’s testimony dove into the details as nicely, calling forth a number of extra first responders and investigators and exhibiting video from the day.
A police reconstruction knowledgeable, William Zubrin, broke down the cops’ calculation that Casey was at fault.
“This crash was caused by operator error, Ms. Charlene Casey’s failure to stop for the van,” mentioned Zubrin. “She crashed into the front wheel. The suspension, the steering was broken in the van. … It was in no control directionally by Mr. Racioppi, the operator.”
Zubrin additionally testified Racioppi was going about 30 mph on a street with a pace restrict of 25 mph. Racioppi beforehand testified he believed he was going between 20 and 25 mph.
Casey’s protection lawyer, Steven Boozang, questioned Zubrin extensively relating to Racioppi’s elevated pace, seemingly aiming to create doubt about whether or not the driving force’s pace and response time could possibly be partially accountable for the accident.
Zubrin caught to his evaluation that Racioppi, who had the correct of method on the intersection, was not at fault.
Boozang took a number of routes at suggesting doubt — once more repeatedly noting the unsmoked marijuana within the van, questioning why an knowledgeable witness was chosen over one other and suggesting bias when a police witness mentioned “crime scene” as a substitute of “alleged crime scene.”
He additionally visibly and audibly annoyed the household and others within the viewers, calling the toddler “Colin McGregor” a number of instances.
“Kerri McGrath,” the mom began her testimony stoically, spelling out her title. “Not McGregor.”
The trial will proceed subsequent Tuesday in Suffolk Superior Court.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”