"Teenager killed in Cape Cod chase ID’d" by Travis Andersen, Globe Staff | March 26, 2010
A 16-year-old youth who crashed his motorcycle and died in Sandwich earlier this week while being pursued by police has been identified.
Sandwich police identified the teenager killed Wednesday night as Richard M. Bellis, a town resident. Chief Robert J. Pomeroy said in a statement that Bellis drove by an officer on Route 130 at approximately 9 p.m. with the headlight off. Bellis was traveling at a “high rate of speed,’’ Pomeroy said. The officer pursued Bellis south and followed him when he turned left on a dirt road toward a rod and gun club, according to Pomeroy. The officer discovered the motorcycle lying under a steel gate near a gravel pit, Pomeroy said, and then found Bellis unconscious.
He was transported to Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis, where he died of his injuries, police said. Sandwich police, Massachusetts Environmental Police, and a Cape Cod Accident Reconstruction Team are investigating the crash. The Cape Cod team is staffed by several local police departments....
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Bellis was a junior at Sandwich High School and a popular student, according to Superintendent Mary Ellen Johnson. “He’s very dear to many people,’’ Johnson said, adding that grief counselors were available to meet with individual students and small groups at the school yesterday. The school also held a moment of silence for Bellis at approximately 10 a.m.
Sandwich High principal Ellin Booras said one of Bellis’s classmates recalled him as the first to say hello to her at the school. “He was one of the friendliest kids, and in the halls he always had a smile on his face and was kind and pleasant,’’ Booras said.
But he was doing something bad -- or so the police say.
Bellis’s grandmother, Marcia Gargiulo, said in a brief phone interview that the crash was a tragedy. “I loved him,’’ she said.
And he is dead because.... ??????
I thought they were supposed to prevent things, not add to them.
After all, the cops ignore so many things.
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