"2 life trajectories intersect tragically in Lakeville; One driver dead; another held" by Brian Ballou | Globe Staff, April 01, 2013
WAREHAM — There was no reason Monica DeMello and Kathleen Allen should have met. But when they did, in the dark of night this weekend on a lonely stretch of two-lane highway, it was fatal.
Both were young and from Middleborough, but the similarities end there. DeMello, an 18-year-old Gordon College freshman home for Easter, was deeply religious and had a keen sense that her life would involve helping others. She didn’t smoke or drink alcohol.
Allen did both. At 23, she already had a string of open court cases suggesting a troubled life: charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, drug possession, larceny. On Friday night, prosecutors say, Allen injected heroin, drank alcohol for hours and, sometime before 2 in the morning, climbed behind the wheel of a Dodge pickup.
She would tell police that as she drove on Route 44 in Lakeville, she dropped a cigarette and bent down to hunt for it. She swerved into oncoming traffic — wrestling briefly with a passenger who grabbed the wheel — and plowed head-on into DeMello’s Hyundai Accent.
DeMello suffered massive head trauma and was declared dead at the scene. The passenger in the truck, Megan Felton, was seriously injured and flown to Brigham and Women’s Medical Center in Boston. Allen sustained bruises from her seat-belt strap....
Drunk and stoned people always survive. Must be God's way of making them pay for what the have done by having to live with it.
Patrick O’Leary, Allen’s attorney, pleaded not guilty on his client’s behalf. Allen, dressed in a grey sweater, stood in a holding area next to O’Leary and turned her back toward the courtroom in an effort to hide from cameras.
The defendant’s mother attended the arraignment and afterward left the courtroom, sobbing as she walked to her car and sat in the front passenger’s seat, holding her hand over her mouth as an unidentified driver drove the car from the parking lot.
DeMello’s mother, Ana Smith, and stepfather, Matthew Smith, attended the arraignment. Anna Smith gasped and tears ran down her cheeks as Mary Nguyen, a Plymouth assistant district attorney, read from a police report about Allen’s alleged drinking and drug use in the hours prior to the crash.
Shocked family and friends mourned and on Monday visited a memorial near the scene of the accident.
“She was so beautiful inside and out,” said Cheri DeMello, Monica’s aunt. “She shined and she loved her family. She never cried, never complained, and always smiled.”
Billy Joel said it best: only the good die young.
Allen told authorities she injected heroin into her arm and drank from 4 to 6 p.m. Friday, prosecutors said. Police were called to Allen’s residence at 35 Cambridge St. at 10:30 p.m. Friday by a neighbor complaining that she was drunk and disruptive. Police again crossed paths with Allen at 12:24 a.m. on Saturday, when they observed her appearing to be intoxicated and disruptive as she stood along Route 28 near West Street with her boyfriend, Nguyen said.
Allen was not taken into custody on either of those two incidents. Police said that on the first call, she disappeared by slipping out a back door at her apartment. In the second encounter on Route 28, police allowed her to leave and she jumped in the back seat of a friend’s pickup truck.
(Blog editor is stunned. They didn't pc the bitch and then they allowed her to leave? So much for PREVENTING crime and PROTECTING US!)
According to a police report, Allen told authorities that she took her eyes from the road when she dropped the cigarette and that when she realized she was in the opposite lane, she attempted to steer the truck left into a parking lot. But at the same time Felton, the passenger, grabbed the wheel and tried to pull right. The truck then hit the Hyundai driven by DeMello....
Her family spent Easter making funeral arrangements....
That's no way to spend Easter.
Ryan Benharris, an attorney from Fall River who is a friend of DeMello’s family, served as a spokesman Monday morning, saying, “When it’s your own family, it’s something that you can’t even comprehend.”
Alisha Packe, who was at the Wareham District Court on an unrelated personal matter, said, “People need to stop drinking and driving.”
I'm for banning booze. If prohibition is good enough for pot....
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