car crash on kidder ave, between pearson ave and highland street.

[ohohiloveyou.livejournal.com]

a half hour ago, at one-thirty a.m., my girlfriend and i were awakened by a giant smash and someone yelling "get on the ground!" and "don't move your hands!"

seconds later, sirens of all kinds were heard through the neighborhood, coming to a point a few houses down from where we live, on kidder ave. i was too curious not to investigate, as i saw from the window a crowd forming of sleepy, startled people from the neighborhood.

i quickly dressed and went outside, to find one person face down on the ground, handcuffed, next to a smoking SUV. on the other side, another person sat quietly. a few yards away, another car sat next to a tree, and i could make out firemen pulling something out of it. shattered glass and some sort of liquid coated the pavement between them.

pretty startling to wake up to. i thought it was a shooting.


anyone know what really happened?

Comments

[farwing.livejournal.com]

Er...not really? But a few people coming away from the site said that there was a high speed crash and that a cab with passengers was involved somehow? I live on the corner of Kidder and Josephine and it looked like it was on Rogers to me but...

[lissie930.livejournal.com]

Ahh, is that what it was? I was up with a vomiting toddler and heard all the sirens (we're over in Union Sq).

[davelew.livejournal.com]

EMTs have taken at least three people away on stretchers, from both the SUV and the car. It seemed like at least one person from each vehicle was unconscious. One of the unconscious people was receiving CPR.

Although I spent some time gawking with the sleepy, startled crowd and speculating at how exactly the accident occurred, I feel like it's inappropriate in this forum to describe the accident in much more detail. Any time firemen are performing CPR, that's a life-and-death situation. Describing life and death and a new cupcake store in Davis just seems wrong to me.

I don't blame you at all for asking the question, I'm just trying to justify why I feel wrong answering it.

[ohohiloveyou.livejournal.com]

i do see what you mean, but i was incredibly curious as to what happened. it was loud enough to wake both of us up, and anything that's that big and crazy happening basically right outside my door is worth figuring out.

[bex77]

Basically, police chase gone bad.

There are a few details here
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/13396918/detail.html

[everose.livejournal.com]

Wow - well, I guess the police ended up catching the drivers of the SUV at the end of all of that. Too bad they had to endanger innocent people and kill someone in the process.

[ron_newman]

Yeah -- unless the SUV driver had killed someone, this was absolutely a bad judgment call on the part of the state police, who probably shouldn't be chasing people into our small residential streets in the first place.

[magid.livejournal.com]

How can the police necessarily avoid the chased choosing a residential street?

[ron_newman]

At some point, they need to decide that the risks of continuing a chase outweigh the benefits. I think that boundary is crossed once it goes down tiny streets like these.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

I remember hearing in the days of the OJ chase that high speed chases shouldn't happen in MA because the police were prohibited from pursuing when lives would be endangered, but apparently I was wrong.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

That may still be the policy, and if it was, it sounds a prima facie like it wasn't followed.

But such a policy seems rather subjective. Any time you do anything, lives can be endangered.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

I agree that high speed chases down the small Somerville Streets seems like a bad idea. If you're the police, back off, and chances are, the perpetrator will simply get lost.

However, once the chase is engaged, magid raises a good point -- the perpetrator may simply not stop the minute police back off.

In other words, if the chase was on a major thoroughfare, and the perpetrator made a sudden turn onto a small street, even if the authorities cease chasing (which I want to make clear that I agree they should), the perpetrator is likely to continue on with reckless abandon for some time.

It sounds like the initial stop was some distance away, and the more I look at the map (http://www.google.com/maps?q=Kidder+Ave+%26+Highland+Rd,+Somerville,+MA+02144,+USA&sa=X&oi=map&ct=image), the more I'm guessing the perpetrator entered Somerville on a more major thoroughfare (Boston Ave.).

If this is fact true (and I have no way of knowing yet whether it is), Javier Morales was on Highland Road for a very short time (no more than ~750ft) before he reached the intersection of Kidder Avenue. At an assumed speed of 60mph, such a distance would be covered in about eight and a half seconds.

It's hard to play what-if, but if the above assumptions are true, and if the police had not turned on to Highland Rd to follow, I can't help but see how Javier Morales would have altered his actions in such a short time to avoid the collision.

[righteousness-1.livejournal.com]

It sux that the driver who would not stop for the police and caused this terrible accident lived and the innocent guy in the taxi died.

[ron_newman]

It also 'sux' that the police continued this chase into a grid of narrow residential streets. Once it entered the Brown School neighborhood, it could not possibly end without serious injury or loss of life.

[hauntmeister.livejournal.com]

At 7:30 this AM, a flatbed tow truck was taking away what was left of the taxi. It looked really bad; the entire passenger side was crushed. I'm not sure if it was a survivable event for the people in the taxi. A half-hour later, there was a video camera on a tripod and someone was interviewing neighbors. Could have been either TV news or the police investigation.

[bikergeek.livejournal.com]

The news article someone linked to above said someone was found in the bushes and that person died. Who knows whether they were a passenger in the taxi or a pedestrian who happened to be in the wrong place on the sidewalk.

[ron_newman]

A short news story from WHDH_TV.

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

Yet again inaccuracies. Obviously Kidder doesn't intersect Highland Ave. They must mean Highland Road.

[ron_newman]

I really wish news organizations would learn local geography. Yesterday on Boston.com was a story about a robbery at "East Boston Savings Bank" on Highland Avenue -- they meant East Cambridge Savings Bank.

[ukelele.livejournal.com]

I read this story in the print edition, and it was correct.

I think part of what you're seeing there is the nature of the online medium -- you get fast response, but some copy editing gets sacrificed. (Though the articles tend to evolve a bit -- if you checked now I bet it'd be correct.)

[davelew.livejournal.com]

Okay, now that this is on thebostonchannel.com and TV crews are involved, I don't feel so bad about commenting, because this is already public. I completely understand curiosity about this, I just wanted to make sure that I showed some level of respect for the injured.

In the late 1990s, I worked on computer models of crash simulations for Honda. I'm no crash expert, and my role was relatively minor, but I have some small experience in the matter from seeing so many simulations. When I saw the damage to the SUV, it reminded me of simulations we did of a virtual 1997 Accord hitting a virtual wall of water barrels at 60 mph. I never did simulations of light truck crashes (that was a different division), so I don't know how my experience translates into SUV crashes, but it gives me a reference point to estimate the speed involved.

I have no way of knowing exactly what happened in the crash, but I can make some guesses and conjectures that are consistent with what I saw of the aftermath. Here's what I think might have happened: The SUV was going down Kidder towards Pearson at around 60 mph, and ran the stop sign at Highland Street. The taxi was going down Highland towards Morrison at a slow speed, having just stopped at the stop sign. The SUV hit the taxi square in the middle of the passenger's side, then the two vehicles stuck together while spinning as the SUVs momentum carried them down Kidder. My guess is the taxi hit the curb and some hedges, and that force cause the taxi to separate and stop while the SUV continued to skid, now facing backwards, down Kidder.

Both SUV airbags deployed, and the windshield was shattered by an occupant's head, at least on the driver's side (I couldn't see the passenger's side very well). The crash frames on either side of the SUV engine compartment did their job and cushioned the impact, probably saving the SUV occupants from more serious injuries.

The taxi was not designed to withstand a high speed impact from that angle. No car is designed for a high speed side impact; a car that safe would be incredibly expensive and fuel-inefficient, not to mention so wide that it would take up two lanes of traffic. A perfectly efficient society would be better served (more lives would be saved) if that money were spent on public health, road safety, and more traffic lights instead of on cars that could withstand high speed side impacts. The news reports say that someone was found in the bushes next to the taxi. I saw a line of bushes flattened by the taxi,and people performing CPR on a man lieing next to the last bit of intact bushes. I couldn't tell if this was someone ejected from the taxi, or a pedestrian hit in the later (and slower) phase of the crash.

[ron_newman]

Somerville News article. I can't tell from this whether the man who died was in the SUV or the taxi.

[friendofpaul.livejournal.com]

he was in the taxi with his gf. she's in critical condition.

[ron_newman]

I'm so sorry to hear this. Let's hope she recovers fully.

details

[friendofpaul.livejournal.com]

hey my friend was the one who died. will somebody email me details of what exactly happened? we're all going crazy out here. thanks

Re: details

[ron_newman]

you'll need to provide your e-mail address (here or in your LJ profile) if you want anyone to e-mail you.

Re: details

[friendofpaul.livejournal.com]

well i don't want my email all over the place, but its ftbarr@gmail.com. thanks

Hi friendofpaul

[shana-lyons.livejournal.com]

I'm so sorry to hear that your friend was the man we saw in our neighbors yard last night. We've been wonder all day about him. He has certainly in our been in our thoughts. I hope this recounting helps you.

We live at the corner of Kidder and Pearson. Our bedroom window faces Highland Avenue. We did not see the crash itself. We heard it. It sounded loud and fast. By the time I looked out the window to see what the ruckus was about, it was about 2-3 minutes later. The first thing I saw was a police officer/trooper holding a gun and screaming at the people in the SUV saying "WHY DID YOU RUN? WHY DID YOU RUN? GET DOWN! GET DOWN! HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!!" He cuffed the driver and the driver's passenger. Both of them were laying face down on Kidder Ave. Then, in less than a minute, more cops showed up. One of them had a bright flashlight and began looking around the cab. That's when we saw the person in the yard for the first time. He was face down. The cop turned him over and started yelling for help. They performed CPR for quite a while. Many people from the EMT and the Police/Fire Departments were near. They took turns performing chest compressions. Soon, EMT's with a backboard were there. They moved your friend on to the board and took him to an ambulance. The next people to go into the ambulence were the people in the cab. They needed some kind of tool (jaws of life?) to open the taxi. It sounded loud and wrenching. The taxi passengers were then taken out by the EMTs. I only saw one person come out of the taxi. I must have missed the second. After the taxi passengers were taken care of, the EMT's moved on to the SUV passenger. She yelled to them she was pregnant. After caring for her, they moved on to the driver.

Alot of other things were going on. . Police read the driver his rights. I didn't see them read the passenger hers. She may not have been. The driver and passenger were cuffed the entire time. EMT's finally took them away around 2:30 ish.

We were closer to the SUV than the cab. Unfortunately, I saw more there than around the taxi.

I hope this helps. You're in our thoughts.

Re: Hi friendofpaul

[ron_newman]

Shana, you are quoted in today's Globe article.

[ron_newman]

A report from WBZ-TV, the most detailed I've found online so far.

SOMERVILLE - An SUV being chased by State Police crashed into a taxi early Sunday morning in Somerville leaving one person dead.

It happened on Highland Avenue [sic] near Kidder Avenue around 1:30 a.m.

A spokesman for the Middlesex County District Attorney's office told WBZ it was a high-speed chase. According to state police, the person in the SUV, Javier Morales, 29, of Somerville, was driving through Everett. when he was ordered to pull over for motor vehicle violations. Morales allegedly refused to stop for state police and led officials on a chase into Somerville.

A short time later, Morales slammed into a cab that was stopped on Highland Road. Paul Farris, 23, of Medford, was found outside the cab after the crash. Police say he was taken to Somerville Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. “This driver’s recklessness led to the tragic death of the young victim, Paul Farris,” Middlesex District Attorney Gerard Leone said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with the victim’s family and friends, and we continue to investigate the circumstances of this crash.”

Farris graduated from Tufts University in 2006 and is originally from Minnesota. He was the lead singer of a Boston-based band called "The Mark."

The driver of the cab and another person inside the cab were taken to Mass. General Hospital for treatment of serious injuries. "The cab was destroyed," said Debbie Reid, who lives in the neighborhood.

"You couldn't even tell if there was anybody even in the cab."

Morales and the passenger in his SUV were also taken to Mass. General to be treated for their injuries.

Police say Morales has been charged with motor vehicle homicide and will be arraigned on Tuesday.

The details of the crash are still under investigation.

[an-art-worker.livejournal.com]

this is really awful. my heart goes out to friends and family.

If the district attorney is correct that this event started because of "motor vehicle violations" then his statement about responsibility is wildly inaccurate: the officer who initiated and continued the chase through city streets also bears responsibility. There are few reasons that I can think of for high speed chases when it potentially can put other people at risk.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

The only person who is responsible for the loss of life is the driver of the vehicle, Javier Morales. He alone could have avoided this tragedy at any time.

I do agree that questions need to be raised about pursuits, and whether the high speed pursuit was engaged at the time of the accident or broken off beforehand or what the speed of the pursuit was and (most importantly), if the pursuit was engaged at high speed, why.

But lest we not forget that all Javier Morales had to do was pull over to stop this. That's all he had to do. Just stop his car.

While I am very much opposed to felony murder statutes, in this particular instance, I find it very sad that Javier Morales can get no more than 20 years in state prison.

I hope that amongst the legitimate questions of the pursuit, people do not lose sight of what happened, and fail to ask the DA to impose the maximum sentence of incarceration until 2027.

[rethcir.livejournal.com]

You're opposed to murder statutes? What else are you opposed to, furry kittens? Or is this some kind of anarchist thing? Maybe I need to be educated on this stance.

Oh no!

[http://users.livejournal.com/_mattt/]

felony murder statutes. In particular, murder statutes where someone can get bootstrapped to life without parole without the intention to kill. There's a Frontline PBS special on juvenile offenders in Colorado getting life without parole for accidental homicides during a felony.

After Sunday 11 p.m. tv news updates

[hillville.livejournal.com]

Clearly a tragedy. The Somerville Police have rules about not getting into high-speed chases in neighborhoods like this one.
Do the Staties have a similar policy? If so, did this trooper follow their guidelines? The concerns about state police procedure are legit, but we're not going to get answers for a while, because accident reconstruction takes time. The Channel 5 reporter (Tim ?) said city officials are already raising questions, though.

Re: After Sunday 11 p.m. tv news updates

[bostonista.livejournal.com]

LAWSUIT. Seriously. For millions.

Globe article this morning

[ron_newman]

This morning's Globe has a long article about this tragedy.

The article says that the police chase began somewhere in Everett, and ended four minutes later on Highland Road. This map is pure guesswork on my part, but it would indicate a chase speed of 45 mph or faster.

The article also says the SUV "hit the cab, which was stopped on Highland Road". This suggests a rear-end collision rather than a side impact, but again I'm just speculating.

On the Somerville News website are messages from the niece of the cab driver and the brother- or sister-in-law of a critically injured passenger. Let's hope both of them fully recover.

Re: Globe article this morning

[ms-info.livejournal.com]

from what I just read in the globe (http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/05/30/state_police_probing_chase_that_led_to_fatality?mode=PF) the map may look like this (http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=1000919) they mention going the wrong way through a rotary in Davis (by which I think they mean Powderhouse) and then a left turn onto Kidder.

[ron_newman]

I walked over to the site today. There are a lot of tire marks on the pavement of both streets. It looks like one of the vehicles burned a lot of rubber trying to turn left from southbound Highland Road onto eastbound Kidder Avenue. It jumped the curb of Kidder and took down a No Parking sign, as well as some bushes at the southeast corner.

[billharnois.livejournal.com]

Ron, you and this posting made the news. Check it out:

http://www.boston.com/partners/worldnow/necn.html?catID=80769&clipid=1472324&autoStart=true&mute=false&continuous=true

[ron_newman]

Wha? I should not be part of this story in any way, as I didn't see or hear the crash and don't live near it. When the Globe reporter called me yesterday, I told her to get an LJ account and post here in order to get in touch with eyewitnesses and other neighbors.

[ron_newman]

OK, now I've watched the video. It has screen shots of this discussion and of the similar one at TheSomervilleNews.com, along with a statement from Mayor Curtatone and some footage of the wreckage. Too bad they gave the address of this site as 'DavisSquareLive.com' ;-(

[jezekel.livejournal.com]

I knew Paul while he was at Tufts. Though I wasn't really friends with him, we had a lot of good friends and common. Such a good guy and completely undeserving of this. I'm still in shock.

[malinalli.livejournal.com]

I went to elementary school with Paul. We were in the same class for 5 years. Though I haven't been in close contact with him in recent years, our families are still friends. I can't believe this happened. I would say that I'm tired of reading all the arguments about traffic violations and police chases, but I realize thats how this tragedy affects those of you who live in the area, and I appreciate that I've been getting a lot of detail from you that I wouldn't be getting from just online news clips. So, thanks.

~Paul's Friend in Texas