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Man admits he drove into and killed two people walking down Beacon Street in the Back Bay
By adamg on Fri, 01/02/2015 - 12:14pm
Mohamed Alfageeh of Allston pleaded guilty today to two counts of motor-vehicle homicide for the deaths of two people from Brookline who were out for a stroll last June, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.
Suffolk Superior Court Judge Carol Ball sentenced Alfageeh to a total of 18 months in a county jail, followed by three years of probation.
Prosecutors said that around 9 p.m. on June 21, Alfageeh drove his Explorer right through a red light outbound on Beacon at Fairfield, striking a Passat with the light, spinning around and then plowing into Jessica Campbell and John Lanzillotti as they walked in a crosswalk, the DA's office reports, adding, "the vehicle came to a rest on its roof after hitting two parked cars."
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Comments
Alright, I'll bite ...
I'm not usually "that guy" but lemme say, a year and a half for two homicides? The circumstances seem unique - he went through a red light, flipped over, hit them - but does the sentence fit the "crime"?
30 days to 30 months is the law
Per count.
I know I'll be flamed for this, but I would blame the law for this rather than the administration of the law. At some point people might agitate for the law to be changed, but as it stands, he could have ended up serving 60 days for this.
Of course, we'll ignore that the sentence has been suspended for 3 years, so as long as this guy stays clean, he won't seen jail time. Of course, if a moving violation counts, who knows?
And naturally, he'll have these two people's blood on his hands. I'm sure that will come out at the next hearing.
EDIT- we both counted wrong. It is 2 years in jail with 18 months suspended. Still, your point is still there.
It sounds like the
It sounds like the investigators are not confident that they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the husband was the driver (as opposed to the wife). So they took this plea and at least some guaranteed jail time rather than push for the maximum 5 years i.e. two 2.5 year sentences for both deaths. Absolutely horrible and heartbreaking situation.
Judge's take per the news
The Cliff Notes on the sentencing decision was that we live in a world where cars are a necessity and they are big machines. Big machines means the consequences of bad actions are escalated and death is a possibility. People should be taught to respect that but also not be condemned by it as doing so doesn't reverse what happened.
AKA This could be me
It's the "gee this could be me" judge and jury who refuse to hold someone accountable as they don't want to admit it could be them accused some day.
Most judges and juries could never imagine being a murdering junkie or a child abuser or a office shooter so these people are given long sentences. But if it's a crime they could see themselves making (drinking and driving, etc) all of a sudden it becomes a freak accident and the punishment is light. It's one of the worst aspects of our legal system.
Two people are dead because someone choose to do something illegal and avoidable. What's it matter if they were accidentally killed by a car or accidentally killed by a gun? Either way two innocent are dead.
Did you honestly just say
Did you honestly just say that empathy is "one of the worst aspects of our legal system"?
I'd agree with that though...
If it's a crime that could happen to a white, middle-class, employed person, the sentence is light.
If it's a crime that involved, say, being in a Black/Latino nightclub, or being at a house party, being in a neighborhood of color, being in a car with friends of a friend, etc., people blame THE VICTIM.
Someone I know was killed a few years back. She was a person of color. She was killed as a result of something that had absolutely nothing to do with her while she was in properly licensed POC-owned business minding her own business. Comments on the Globe story asked what kind of mother wouldn't be home with her kids, why she was in a sketchy/ghetto/etc. place, why she would go to a restaurant where gang members come in with guns, whether she was drunk, and so forth. It was horrendously offensive.
This woman was so similar to me in many ways. But if I got shot while out to dinner at a white restaurant with a babysitter or the other parent staying home, no one would be saying this shit about me.
Globe comments?
So, you're basing your opinion on comments in the Globe website?
Why are people using the
Why are people using the wordy 'x of colour' everywhere now when they refer to minorities? Why not just state what they are? Is it now okay to refer to someone (non South Afrikaner) as coloured? I can't keep up with what weaselwords of avoidance are and aren't racist anymore.
"minorities"
Give it a couple of years and that word will be pretty meaningless (thanks Latinos!). But the continual changing of words is kind annoying, grammatically-speaking and it also opens the door for further confusion about peoples' intent/attitudes. We still have an "NAACP" but we're not talking about "colored people" any more - it's "people of color" - so much for the economy of the English language. If you go to the UNCF web site you won't ever see a spelling out of the acronym from the "A Mind is a Terrible Thing To Waste" folks. My parents still refer to anyone from the east of Asia as "Chinese" and what does it mean to be "Asian" anyways when you've got Indians, Arabs, Chinese, etc.. all laying equal claim to the term - but the image in mind when the term is used in the US typically refers to one segment of the population of that massive continent.
This isn't even talking about the confusion around "Latino" as being a "race" or an "ethnicity." And all in service to a scientifically invalid, made-up concept like "race" that ultimately doesn't mean anything outside of the nasty shit attached to it for so many generations by people maintaining their grip on a social order that they benefited from. No wonder we're so fucked up and can't even talk about the issue.
Yup
When it results in families being broken up over minor drug offenses yet allows someone who kills a person with their car to walk free or with a minor punishment. Yes, I'd consider this a serious flaw.
Well.....
That's true of our society and culture, generally, imho.
Naive question.....
but is there not any way to better differentiate, legally, between driving behaviors that are CLEARLY reckless, dangerous, and irresponsible......and the kind of stupid driving mistakes that, if we're being honest, almost any driver could possibly make on a bad day? Do we just leave it to sentencing to do that? Is this (technically) a harsh sentence, compared to others where a driver is at fault under less egregious circumstances? If so, it still seems so light.
I mean, I get the "it could have been me thing" -- I often feel an irrational fear of causing a terrible accident, even though I believe I'm a very careful driver. But, you know, this REALLY couldn't have been me. Nor, I would like to think, most of us. Right? RIGHT????
You're so spot-on about this, BostonDog!
Our society and culture, as a whole, has deteriorated to the point where there is zero accountability for one's actions and behaviors, and this guy who damaged a car and ended up killing two people because he did something illegal (i. e. running a red light while driving), and received what was just a slap on the wrist for what he did! That is beyond disgusting. I hope the guy in question gets a much longer sentence. He should be charged with vehicular homicide, imho.
One problem with you point
He has plead guilty to 2 counts of motor vehicle homicide, which is one more than you think he should be charged with. The maximum sentence is 30 months per charge.
Yeh, but,
The guy in question pled guilty to two counts of motor vehicular homicide, due to having killed two people who were crossing the street, due to his having violated the law by running a red light, really should be in jail, for a long time, imho.
Once again
The max sentence is 30 months per charge. Max. You don't get jail time for speeding. You don't get jail time for running a red light. The term of the suspension of his sentence is the most he'd be responsible for (legally) for his actions.
Would I be upset if he went away for a long time? No. But he got basically what people get when they plead guilty to these charges.
Citations Needed
Crime is at historic lows and number of citizens in prison is at historic, world highs.
False nostalgia for a past that never actually occurred is a crutch of an argument. When in history were we safer and people more accountable for their crimes and brought to justice?
He made a preventable mistake. He should pay.
He voluntarily drove in such in way that killed two people. It was not a freak mechanical error. No one forced him to drive in such a way that no lawful member of society would consider acceptable.
The punishment should be a long, long time in jail. He took two lives away. (Economically, this amounts to ~$18 million given their ages.) Taking his life away for 10-15 years would at least bring a reminder to others that there are consequences for driving like an asshole, even if you're not the only one to do so.
There should be no difference in punishment between a scared burglar who shoots a cop and a lunatic driver who kills two people. Regrettable mistake or not, people are dead.
Except
There's very little correlation out there that punitive laws lower or stop most crimes. Especially ones where premeditation is not a factor at all.
All they do is fill up jails and create a job program that pumps out more harden criminals, since our jailing system doesn't much actually try to rehabilitate inmates but seeks to just hold them somewhere while serving their sentence.
Also, you're forgetting the civil trial that will be coming next that also will carry a punitive effect that will follow this man for the rest of his life
The purpose of our system is Justice, not revenge.
If you truly believe
in "justice, not revenge", then there should be NO civil trial. He pled guilty to criminal charges - case closed.
Don't Agree
So what is justice anyway? If it was a mistake why have any jail & probation at all? Why 1 year and not 1 day? Either way he'll always need to say he was convicted of crime and served jail time.
It's hard to argue that there is no correlation between jail time and crimes when it involves automobiles as society has never tested harsh sentences for driving incidents. (Unlike drug crimes.)
I bet if everyone caught drinking and driving was made to serve at least three years in jail (1st offense) you'd see a lot more otherwise lawful people opting for water instead of another beer.
You have no sense of statistics, data, or rationality
Stop going with yer gut, cause yer gut is wrong.
Much like drinking, the vast majority of drunk drivers are a tiny minority of habitual offenders that do not much care for the law says. Further, drunk driving is something done with premeditation, sober or not, and can be stopped by locking someone up. So it's a terrible example anyways.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=http://img.washington...
You also bring up the drug war, which obviously has rid the country of drug addicts, lowered demand for illicit and prescription drugs, and destroyed all black markets and cartels. And we're all getting fucking unicorns tomorrow.
Drunk drivers who are habitual offenders
don't have to be in the majority to cause tremendous grief and problems in general, and to be a real menace to other people on the road! One or two people who get killed or permanently maimed/disabled by a drunk driver is too damned many, as far as I'm concerned.
Justice isn't the purpose
Honestly, I don't know what the purpose of this whole trial and law exercise is if we can't get all of our branches of government together to decree that this guy should die.
Say it with me: All illegal acts that result in the killing of another person (this means you, raghead Mario Andretti.) All rapes. All armed robberies. Execute every single one of them.
EDIT: Way to bury the lede, WBZ. He's originally from YEMEN? Are you (expletive) kidding me? What was this jerkoff doing in our country? He's not a student. What job function did he perform that couldn't be ably performed by somebody who was born in America? Why are we importing dangerous criminals?
Hey, Will
As a descendant of a family of "ragheads", I say go fuck yourself.
Hey, Kaz
You really don't need to qualify it - after comments like that you can just tell Will to go fuck himself just because he's an asshole. Because it really is all about him.
and the fact that he's a colon polyp that can manipulate a keyboard.
Wow
Just... wow.
Jesus
First, he was an American citizen. No, he wasn't born here. But he was an American citizen.
Second, please cut the gratuitous racist-name crap. As I've mentioned elsewhere, I've reached the "I don't care" phase of my online life, and I'm no longer quite as loathe to ban people. Yeah, yeah, First Amendment and all that, but that doesn't apply to a privately run site and, as I just said, I don't care.
Trolls need not apply (or post)
Thank you Adam for trying to keep this as one of the few sites on the internet where you can read the comments and not want to go out and punch someone in the face.
Well, why was he allowed to become an American citizen?
Were his parents born here and just visiting Yemen?
Probably for the same reason millions of other people have
Who knows? Why does it matter?
Because our country has a real problem with overpopulation
We really gotta limit who gets in and who doesn't. And there's a lot of really dangerous folks who come from other places that are even less respectful that America, as hard as that is to fathom at this point.
I'm all for a good rags to riches story involving the smartest kid in a bad country coming over here and making a good life, but our borders remain porous.
Bullshit
We aren't even in the top ten of the densest populated countries.
Define dense
We can't employ and educate and feed and shelter the people we have now.
Bullshit
It's not that we can not, it's that we choose not to. We can't be the richest country in the world, and the most wealthy in the history of the world, and not be able to afford it. We just decided we don't want to do it.
I'd also point out that your view is antithetical to a capitalist economy, and without immigration the US would be facing major deflationary problems due to the birthrate of non-immigrant families. We'd be facing the same problems Japan has for the last 20 years; a shrinking, aging population.
That's a big no-no on a system that is based on population increases to create large multipliers in wealth generation like capitalism.
Because he knew more than many US High school graduates?
In other words, he passed the citizenship test and he'd been here long enough?
Try it for yourself, Mr. Trivia!
11 out of 14
I said 26 amendments instead of 27, I could only name one of the four amendments which address voting rights, and I couldn't name the application form for citizenship.
This Yemeni only killed half as many as the Tsarnaevs.
The Tsarnaev family, the Morriset family (D-Haiti who put two Boston cops in the hospital last week) and this guy should all be deported. Granting citizenship on demand to the criminal element serves no useful purpose for this still great country. Did I read correctly that one of the Morriset "kids" had three open cases in Dorchester District Court? There should be a sponsorship/long probationary period before these types are given the great gift of U.S. citizenship. "Only running the red lights that Americans refuse to run, and only killing the Americans that Americans refuse to kill." Recipe for disaster. God bless the injured Boston Police, the Marathon victims and the nice young American couple killed in this case. May your injuries and deaths not be in vain.
Let's not forget the victims in this
I'm glad you guys are satisfying your blood lust tonight in feasting on the idea of deportation, execution and putting heads on spikes and all, but have you given the least amount of thought to the two people who actually died here?
Of course I have
That could have been my mom or your daughter who got mowed down. That's why I advocate for this guy being removed from the gene pool.
This case nowithstanding
It amazes me people like you will bitch about government incompetence in one hand, then praise the ability of the state to execute citizens in the other, without bothering to realize these are mutually exclusive opinions.
Either the state is always right and never makes mistakes and is a good actor, or it's terrible, no good, and shouldn't be trusted. At least with those views.
Or maybe it's gray like all of life, and our current legal system was designed to protect the innocent, and hold the guilty accountable to a degree that it doesn't incriminate the innocent. But hey, fuck the founders they were a bunch of douches anyways, right?
When did I praise the ability of the state to execute people?
Our state (yeah, I know, different definition) doesn't execute them at all! You're making my point.
Well, then!
I guess we all now know how the aimless hipster barfly sister fucking boring quizmaster from Vermont feels about sharing his country with those people.
Of course, any tine you want to head over to the limo pool around prayer time and express your idiotic racist sentiment to the fifty or so "ragheads" there, I'd personally get a kick out of watching them go all Jihad on your dumb ass. Of course, you'd have to grow the balls to say it to their faces, which I highly doubt you possess.
Sister (expletive)?
Yeah, I've done that with people's sisters before. Not my own, of course, I don't have one.
Of course you don't!
Your parents, obviously seeking forgiveness from society for the mistake that is you, wisely chose not to bring a child bearing sibling into the world, cutting down the possibility that the world would be infected by more of your ilk.
If you ask me
Vermont's decline started when they started letting the frogs over from Quebec. It got worse when the frogs became citizens. The decline took off when they had anchor babies in the U.S. The absolute worst was when their descendents came to Boston and started hosting trivia nights.
Shaking my head.
Raghead Mario Andretti? Really?
By Yemeni (and we say that where I come from - Southern Buffalo, NY, which is largely Syrian since before my family came to the States. They came to work in the steel mills in the late 19th century - about the same time when the Kikes, the Nicks and the Greasers were boating their way over, interestingly enough.)
As much of a Dumb Polack as I may be, I do recall that it was a bunch of "Happy Arabians" from the Lackawanna area who sussed out an Al-Qaida ring in that area.
Micks.
Not 'Nicks'. Get it right.
Hey, Will!
I really don't give a wet rat's ass where the guy in question is from, or what his ethnicity/origin is. The whole point is that the guy ran a red light (which is illegal), collided with another car, and then ended up killing 2 people who were crossing the street, and got off with just a slap on the wrist, which is beyond disgusting, imho.
Holy cow.
"There should be no difference in punishment between a scared burglar who shoots a cop and a lunatic driver who kills two people. Regrettable mistake or not, people are dead."
You actually believe that? You actually said that? OK, your scared burglar that shoots a cop brought a gun to the felony he was committing. He pointed it at a cop and pulled the trigger. This is not a 'regrettable mistake'. This is attempted murder of someone interfering with an ongoing felonious crime
A guy runs a light, rolls an SUV (oh, they roll like barrells) and skids into two people.
If you don't see the difference, then it will be beyond my meager abilities to explain it to you.
Yeah, I don't see the differance
So lets say the burglar didn't intend to shoot the cop or thought the plainclothes cop was the homeowner about to shoot him and figured it was his only choice to survive? Either way it's not premeditated but someone is dead.
This wasn't a freak traffic accident -- the guy was going at a high rate of speed down a residential street and made no effort to stop for a light. The two people didn't run out into the street like deer. Just like the hypothetical burglar he didn't intend to kill someone when he got into the car that evening yet he did.
I can't get over the fact two people are dead in an easily avoidable incident.
Reckless gun use a better comparison
Instead of shooting someone during a robbery, say our theoretical felon was just celebrating something by shooting off a gun randomly and killed someone? Or, perhaps, fired off a couple of shots into a wall or through a window?
I wonder if that reckless gun usage (as opposed to reckless car usage) would be viewed much more severely under the law?
Guns are probably considered more dangerous than cars....
And probably more so in terms in why you are using it. I would say a judge would see a car as more of a necessity of life than a gun and would treat it as such.
That being said, if you shot a gun up in the air and a bullet came down and killed someone........? That might get the same sentences a car killing someone.
Pretty much everyone in my
Pretty much everyone in my extended family needs a car to get to work. No one in my family needs a gun to get to work.
"Need" is beside the point
The point is that a car operated recklessly and resulting in a death is more comparable to a gun operated recklessly and resulting in a death than it is to a gun being used during a robbery (the original comparison).
Which raised the question: what would the difference be in the sentences meted out?
The fact that most people use cars safely on a daily basis to get to work is moot here.
"Need" has a lot to do with it....
The judge even said so in the sentencing decision.
Well, then
Let's see what happens to the welders who recklessly operated a welding torch - which they used for their job, which is a need in society - and burned down two houses and killed two firefighters.
but what caused him to plow
but what caused him to plow through light and flip? surely not going the speed limit...
Feel free to correct me, but
Feel free to correct me, but didn't this guy also lie at the scene and say it wasn't him driving?
A lot of people seem to think
A lot of people seem to think so, but try to find one article (not a comment) which says that. Supposedly the husband said it was him the entire time, but the police had conflicting witness information so they did their own investigation.
Let's not forget
Jess and Jack were very close friends on mine. Let's not forget what's important here, two great, young people who were out having a picnic at the esplanade were suddenly taken from us because someone was driving too fast and wreckless, causing three families to be forever damaged and many more friends and familes changed forever. These two quotes in the Globe article say it all:
“I don’t have the words to tell you how shattered we are,” she [Jess' mother] said. “It took ten years of tests and doctors and pills to have my first child, Jessica... I like to think she was the best of us.”
"“I just hope people remember [Jack and Jessica] for what they were,” Lanzillotti’s mother said. “Two honest, really good people.”
And, as DA Dan Conley said
Huh?
Am I hallucinating or do I recall hearing way back this summer that there were witnesses who said he was going at a highly excessive rate of speed through a number of red lights AND that they had seen the same car doing the same thing on the same street previously? And didn't he have a bad driving record already?
If so (and I am in fact not hallucinating) then this isn't just a case of "my eyes were off the road for a split second" or "the sun's glare blinded me" and a higher sentence would perhaps set an example to the other EuroArabitrash road racers out there.
The sentence is suspiciously light for a situation where one person was acting so recklessly and two people are dead.
BU Kid
You're likely confusing this with the BU kid who was doing 100-something down Beacon St. The circumstances between this case and that case are pretty similar only that kid got luckily and didn't hit someone legally in the intersection before being caught.
I was surprised to hear that
I was surprised to hear that he got any jail time at all. What's also terrible is that it was his actions that caused another car to actually strike to the two victims. That person has to live with that for the rest of his/her life. The victims' families and loved ones have to live with this tragedy for the rest of their lives. The victims lost their lives. Did the guy who did this express remorse? I walk in that area several times per week: people still run red lights and blow through stop signs. The arrogance of some drivers is off the charts.