i Leaving-scene trial opens
Leaving-scene trial opens
Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 02/25/2009

FARMINGTON -- The driver of a pickup truck who left the scene of a fatal, multiple-vehicle accident last winter told a judge Tuesday he believed at the time that the beams that had fallen off his trailer were not responsible for the crash.

Domingos Medeiros, 49, of Assonet, Mass., is charged with leaving the scene of a personal-injury accident that involved death or serious bodily injury, a felony.

Stephen McKenney, of New Portland, died just after 5 p.m. Jan. 16, 2008, when a beam went through his car's windshield on Route 27 in New Vineyard.

Franklin County Superior Court Justice Michaela Murphy is expected to announce her verdict in the jury-waived trial this morning. The maximum penalty is five years in jail and a $5,000 fine.

Medeiros, under questioning by his attorney, Walter McKee, of Augusta, said he did not know his load of lumber was gone until he reached Farmington, about 10 minutes from the scene of the accident. He said he and the contractor who owned the wood, Timothy Harvey, immediately turned around in their separate trucks to find it.

Instead, they found the road blocked by emergency vehicles.

When Medeiros asked a bystander what happened, she told him there had been a "three-car accident with a casualty," he said, which he interpreted to mean there was an accident but it was not caused by wood in the road.

He said he did not inform a firefighter who was busy directing traffic away from the scene that he had lost a load of wood.

"I didn't want to be a nuisance," he said.

Medeiros, who owns a company in Fall River, Mass., that manufactures building trusses, had made a delivery in Kingfield and was on his way home hauling seven beams, each about 17 feet long, 12 inches wide and 6 inches deep and weighing a total of 2,200 pounds. He had strapped the wood onto the flatbed trailer himself, he said, stating he is meticulous about safety.

"If I had thought for a second that the lumber had caused an accident, I would have contacted authorities immediately," he said Tuesday.

Medeiros turned himself in on Jan. 23, 2008.

To prove a person is guilty of the charge of leaving the scene of a personal-injury accident that involved death or serious bodily injury, the state must show it was done knowingly, recklessly and intentionally.

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