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DA: Brighton hit-and-run suspect had bottle of sedatives in car
By adamg on Thu, 07/16/2009 - 1:06pm
A Brighton District Court judge today ordered Cathy Bergin-August, 48, to surrender her driver's license at least until her trial on charges she nearly killed a father putting his infant son in a car seat on Cambridge Street, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office.
Bergin-August was also ordered to pay $1,000 bail after pleading not guilty to charges of negligent operation of a motor vehicle and leaving the scene of an accident causing personal injury, the DA's office says.
Bergin-August is charged with hitting the man - at Mass. General Hospital following brain surgery - around 8 a.m. yesterday, the DA's office says, adding:
Bergin-August's vehicle was transported to Boston Police headquarters with front end damage and a cracked windshield; a routine inventory of the vehicle turned up a bottle of prescription sedatives with a label warning users to use caution when operating machinery.
Innocent, etc.
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Comments
Um...that doesn't seem fair
She was a private practice geriatric nursing aide who ran to the pharmacy for her patients. To publicize that she had "prescription sedatives" in her car is really bordering on malicious without also claiming if they were HER'S or if she claimed to have USED any.
Damn, look, I absolutely detest what she did (probably while passing someone turning left at that intersection or something stupid like that, given the lane width there)...but that REALLY seems nearly libelous to implicitly suggest that she might have been drugged up at the time of the incident...
DA is looking into it
I asked Jake Wark, spokesman for the DA's office about the bottle and whether investigators are looking into possible impairment. His answer:
It's standard to note the
It's standard to note the presence of potential evidence at a crime scene. The Boston Police report on the incident, upon which the arraignment and subsequent press release were based, does just that. No malice intended. Ultimately, though, the charges -- negligent operation, not operation under the influence -- speak for themselves.
Sure, sure
But just look at like the first few comments on the Globe website, Mr. Wark.
Hell, for that matter, look at the headline the story was put under here! You were either naive to put details like that without any better disclaimer of why she might have them on her or craftily biasing people against her. It's pretty obvious that if the news reads "Woman causes accident, critical injuries. Pills found in car." that nobody is going to think "hmm, I wonder if she might have had the pills because of her work." instead of "damn druggie was high as a kite when she almost killed a man!". Right? You knew that would be the natural reaction, right? It took her own lawyer to even *mention* that she was working as a nursing aide..and I doubt he even knew about the pill disclosure to help get out ahead of the news on it and was just trying to point out that she was employed helping the public to try and save face for her.
The worst part is you actually make me feel bad for her with the way this was put out there. She's an awful person for what she's done to that young father and his family, and to basically flee like she started to. There's no reason to color her as maybe a drug addict because she was found with pills!
Kaz...
Kaz they do that so its public information that potential evidence was there at the time of arrest. It could be a chain of custody issue, or an issue of getting the facts out right away.
Im sure the DAs office doesn't care what people on the globe comment section thinks about anything. She wasn't charged with anything, so intelligent people like you and I can see that she didn't commit any drug crimes.
So
If a dirty homicide detective punches a guy shortly after going off duty and the guy nearly dies, then when the DA releases his charges as "assault and battery with intent for injury" (or whatever), do they also say "and officers recovered a concealed handgun holstered under his jacket"?
They should...
I mean, that could be assumed anyway because he was a cop.
And being armed in any sort of assault crime would be important, just as possessing legal drugs in a motor vehicle would be important to document right away.
Finding this prescription medicine also might help this woman. It shows that after an initial investigation, the police did not find any evidence that the drugs contributed to this crash. If they didnt document it, and the drugs ended up in the tow yard, and some tow truck driver took the pills out or ripped off the label, or spilled them or whatever....and then there was another inventory search of the vehicle that turned up some loose pills on the floor......it might make things look a little different dont ya think?
Our press release went out
Our press release went out after the Globe story went up. Globe commenters are commenting on the Globe story, which was based on the arraignment and police report. A reporter sat in the courtroom, got the report, and wrote about his observations, not a press release.
In candor, if I were going to draft releases based on potential Globe or Herald comments, I'd take an entirely different tack.
In this particular case, I might put the pills up top instead of at the end of the sixth paragraph. Adam clipped a single sentence, so you probably don't have an idea of the context, but it's clearly not the lede.
The press release in full
Here.
I led with the pills because it seemed (without having seen the Globe story) to be something new.
how was this woman insured?
The Globe article mentioned she's caused something like 5 collisions (they're not "accidents", the NHTSA doesn't use that term anymore, hasn't for more than a decade) in the last few years. I had a speeding ticket and an inspection sticker ticket, and my collision had a 60% increase AND a couple of companies refused to insure me...
Also, she was driving a rental car- maybe because she in fact could not get insurance. If that's the case, it seems unlikely she was carrying full insurance, and that means this guy is pretty much fucked, unless his MV insurance or health insurance cover it. She's also going to be bankrupted (as she should be.)
BTW, Kaz, you want to retract yesterday's whiny spew about how she's a medical-industry employee and thus a flipping angel?
Nope
You're an incompetent reader if you think my "whiny spew" said she should be a "flipping angel" or if you thought that anything I said implied she should be allowed to drive a car.
I simply said that I was utterly shocked to figure out that she worked as a nursing aide but would leave someone injured at the scene of an accident. Nothing you or the article mentions changes that in any way. She could have been in 100 collisions prior to now, but still stopped and made sure everyone was okay after each one of them. She's never been tagged for fleeing the scene before this one according to what they report on her record. I don't see how I was whiny OR characterizing her as an angel either, considering I was actually requesting a HIGHER standard from her as a medical professional involved in a personal injury.
So, anon, go sit on your keyboard and twirl.
she wasnt charged
with operating a vehicle without insurance either, so that probably answers that question.
And she wasn't charged with possession of prescription drugs that werent hers. Another indication that the drugs had nothing to do with it.
EDIT: I think operating without insurance is not criminal anymore anyway, but the civil motor vehicle violations are usually included in the charges either way.
Burden of proof in at-fault determination
Someone having multiple at-fault accidents doesn't necessarily mean they did something negligent. Remember that for most types of accidents, fault is determined by the type of damage, unless one party can prove (witnesses, etc.) that the other person didn't yield properly.
When my car got totaled last year, the other party was automatically presumed to be at fault because he hit my side with his front bumper, which indicates that I was traveling in a straight line and he pulled out when he shouldn't have. This was accurate in my case; he was on a side road and had a stop sign and I was on the main street and didn't, and he ran assumed I would stop since it was an intersection (as he screamed at me repeatedly after totaling my car). But if I'd have been going a little slower or he'd pulled out more abruptly, I could have rear-ended him and had no way to prove that he pulled out in front of me.
I have a job where we drive around in Dorchester and Roxbury all day. Both neighborhoods shift rapidly between congested city-type traffic and quiet residential area every couple of streets. So you get a lot of accidents when people don't shift to needing to pay attention. I have several coworkers who've been deemed at-fault in accidents where they couldn't prove that the other person did something stupid/illegal/negligent. One cow orker had someone BACK UP INTO HER while she was stopped on Morrissey Blvd. She was found at fault since she couldn't prove it, and the damage looked like she'd rear-ended him. Another cow orker had someone brush her bumper with the side of their fender as they cut into her lane while she was stopped, and the other person claimed that she cut into their lane. Similar to my accident, the other party had damage to the side of their car from a bumper, so they deemed that my coworker who WASN'T MOVING was at fault since she couldn't prove it.
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
None of these examples
None of these examples include a HIT AND RUN. Even if the father had jumped out in front of the car, she fled the scene.
Where does it say
that her 5 at-fault accidents involved her fleeing the scene?
http://1smootshort.blogspot.com
Leaving the scene of a hit
Leaving the scene of a hit and run which maybe results in manslaughter = $1,000 bail?
I wonder if someone in DTX fired a few gunshots in the air and ran away, and someone got hit by the falling bullet. What would the bail be? Also $1,000?
you laugh J
but the guy shooting the gun might get less. And Im being dead serious.
MA courts don't set high bails for whatever reason. Interesting article in the globe a few weeks back about the Springfield Chief of Police calling out MA judges. It was more about not putting people in jail for defaulting on court apperances but the message is the same.
That being said I think 1K bail is fair in this case.
The "run" part
seems to me to be the most criminal aspect of the woman's behavior. You hit someone, injuring them severely, and don't stop to admit responsibility and, more importantly, see if they're okay, call an ambulance, etc. Accidents happen- but the "leaving the scene" charge should carry mandatory jail time, IMO.
Most criminal
She caused five crashes in the last five years and she went and got into a car again. This woman should be charged with voluntary manslaughter. She knew perfectly well she was inevitably going to kill someone with her driving.
WBZ reporting that the
WBZ reporting that the victim, Fredy Eduardo Latin Zepeda, has passed away. RIP.
http://wbztv.com/local/brighton.hit.and.2.1089846....
....
..fuck. That is just awful. I also just read he has a 9 year old son in Guatemala too.
I hope she doesn't see the outside world for quite a long time.
Latest comments from her lawyer
One of the latest comments from her lawyer was that she wasn't fleeing but looking for a safe place to pull over.
That's horse crap. Cambridge Street is nearly 2 cars wide on BOTH sides from Union Square all the way to where it meets Washington Street. The entire ROAD is safe to pull over. Besides, when you bounce someone off of your windshield, the safest place to pull over is WHERE YOU ARE! You don't get to go parallel park while someone is possibly dying in the street!
Change the Law?
I think that leaving the scene should raise charges to murder or attempted murder. If you run somebody down and then leave them to die, there is a certain degree or intention to kill them.
There isn't a way to apply it to this situation, but maybe the law can be changed to remove the incentive to take off and just get your windshield fixed.
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I don't want to in any possible way blame the victim here, but idiot crazyass drivers like this piece of work are why I always put my kids in the carseats from the sidewalk side, even if I had to put the seats forward to do it.