"Cape DA admits mistake in drunken driving case" by J.D. Capelouto, Amelia Nierenberg and John R. Ellement Globe Correspondents | Globe Staff July 31, 2018
Nearly two months before he led police on a chase that ended in a fatal head-on collision, Mickey A. Rivera was accused of driving drunk in Hyannis, but even though he already faced charges related to a 2015 slaying, the 22-year-old was released without bail.
On Monday, in a rare public admission, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O’Keefe said the assistant district attorney had handled the case improperly.
“The district court prosecutor simply asked for a bail warning and asked that he be released on his personal recognizance,” O’Keefe said days after both Rivera and Kevin P. Quinn, who was returning from visiting his newborn daughter at the hospital, were killed in the crash. “Should he have done that? The answer is no.”
That would be "Kevin P. Quinn, a 32-year-old Mashpee man had survived two combat tours in Afghanistan as a Marine and a new father on his way home from a hospital visit with his wife and newborn daughter."
Her reaction to being told must have been unimaginably heartbreaking. He was just there, but won't be coming anymore.
At the time of Rivera’s arraignment, the assistant prosecutor had been on the job for only one month and did not have many details about his previous arrest and arraignment in Fall River, O’Keefe said. O’Keefe did not identify the prosecutor.
Rivera was indicted in Bristol Superior Court in June 2015 in connection with the fatal shooting of Anthony Carvalho in March 2015.
Just wondering why he wasn't in jail after that.
Just after midnight on Saturday morning, Mashpee police began chasing Rivera, who was spotted speeding and driving recklessly on Route 28.
The chase lasted just minutes, ending when Rivera collided head-on with a SUV driven by Quinn, 32, a Marine Corps veteran who was returning to his Mashpee home after visiting his wife and their newborn daughter at the hospital.
A passenger in Rivera’s car, Jocelyn Goyette, 24, was in critical condition Sunday. Police did not provide an update on her condition Monday.
Friends on Monday remembered Quinn as a fun-loving man who was deeply committed to his family.
“When you hear about this horrific accident and I hear it stems from a police pursuit of a criminal who has no respect for the police? And kills my friend when he’s coming home from visiting his wife and 2-day-old daughter? I am sad but I am angry,” said Denise Lauren Kalbach, 42, a longtime friend of Quinn’s.
On Monday, she went to the site of the accident to pay her respects, leaving a white cross that had been made by a veteran.
It was not known what triggered Rivera’s decision to flee from police, but his criminal history showed that an arrest could have sent him to jail for an extended period of time.
Superior Court Judge Thomas McGuire reduced Rivera’s bail in the Fall River case last fall over the objections of prosecutors.
“I was very disappointed the court reduced the defendant’s bail so drastically, based on the defendant’s criminal record and the serious nature of the charges,” Bristol District Attorney Thomas M. Quinn III said in a statement.
Rivera was due to appear in Bristol Superior Court on Tuesday for the latest hearing in the Fall River case, prosecutors said.
In a separate case, Rivera was charged in March 2015 with armed and masked home invasion, armed assault, and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, in connection with the stabbing of two women in Taunton, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors dropped the charges because the victims could not identify Rivera, and the only other independent witness exercised a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, leaving law enforcement without the evidence needed to proceed with the case.
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The fatal weekend crash also focused attention on the risks of police chases. While hundreds of people die nationwide every year in crashes linked to these pursuits, no official national or statewide policy or protocol exists about when and how police should pursue suspects.
Globe just did a U-turn and is trying to fault the police!!!
In Massachusetts, the policies for chases are decided by each individual department, said Steve Wojnar, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association and chief of the Dudley Police Department.
“It’s the split-second decision on the part of the officer and it’s based on the totality of the circumstances,” said former Boston police commissioner Edward F. Davis III. “Are you pursuing someone that just raped and murdered someone, or are you pursuing someone who was wanted for a warrant?”
After listening to radio chatter from the field, a supervisor will often decide whether to pursue a suspect, Davis said. The supervisor considers the nature of the crime against the risk that the pursuit could cause harm.
“Having to make it in the heat of the chase is a horrible decision,” said professor Geoffrey P. Alpert of the University of South Carolina, a leading expert on police pursuits. “The supervisor is an important part of the pursuit triangle because it’s someone who is not involved and doesn’t have a stake in it.”
Away from the adrenaline in the field, the supervisor considers environmental factors such as darkness or rain, as well as factors such as traffic volume or number of pedestrians.
“The fewer people on the road, the more likely police are to make a pursuit,” Davis said.
Mashpee police officials did not respond to questions about whether the department has a formal policy on pursuing suspects.
Just let the guy go next time.
According to transmissions recorded by Broadcastify, the chase reached speeds of up to 65 miles per hour.....
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Any relation?
"Woman charged in death of teenager lured into prostitution in Braintree" by Travis Andersen Globe Staff April 30, 2018
DEDHAM — A young Lowell woman lured 19-year-old Reina Rodriguez into prostitution with the promise of money, but later conspired with two men to rob her at a Braintree hotel, in a scheme that resulted in Rodriguez’s death, prosecutors said Monday.
Assistant Norfolk District Attorney Lisa Beatty laid out the chilling allegations during the arraignment of Juana Rivera, 19, in Norfolk Superior Court on murder and other charges stemming from the death of Rodriguez. She was found naked from the waist up with her hands and legs bound by cellphone cords on June 22, 2017 inside a Hyatt Place Hotel room in Braintree, according to prosecutors.
Rodriguez’s mother, Sigryd Garcia, told reporters after the hearing that she hopes Rivera lives “a miserable life” behind bars for her alleged role in the murder.
“She took the life of my daughter,” an emotional Garcia said.
She added that her daughter had “a very good heart. She was a beautiful girl.”
Beatty said Rivera initially promised to show Rodriguez, a former Lawrence resident who was homeless, how to make “a lot of money” through prostitution, but “significant animosity and conflict” developed between the two, and Rivera allegedly hatched a plan with two codefendants, Kentavious Coleman and Kenyonte Galmore, to rob Rivera inside the hotel room on the night of her death.
A statement of the case filed by prosecutors said Rivera became angry when Jason McLeod, an alleged pimp who took proceeds from Rodriguez’s sex work and who previously had a relationship with Rivera, began a relationship with Rodriguez.
On the day of the murder, Rivera, posing as a client, set up a meeting with Rodriguez via text message and passed along Rodriguez’s room number to Galmore, the filing said.
A witness identified only as J.J. told a grand jury that after the killing, Rivera confronted Coleman and Galmore, who claimed that “the victim struggled so they had to smother her until she died,” the document said.
The medical examiner determined that Rodriguez died from “homicidal asphyxia,” according to the filing.
Prosecutors said Galmore’s DNA profile was found on a cellphone cord that bound Rodriguez’s legs, in a red-brown stain on the bed, and in Rodriguez’s finger nail clippings.
Galmore and Coleman are in custody in Mississippi and will be brought back to Massachusetts to face murder charges in the slaying, prosecutors said.
Hotel surveillance footage showed Coleman entering the lobby with Galmore before the murder, and a hotel clerk saw them leave the lobby separately, according to prosecutors.
McLeod was arrested Friday in Maine and faces human trafficking charges in connection with the case, officials said.
See: Two men extradited to Massachusetts to face charges in murder of 19-year-old woman
They plead not guilty.
Rivera was handcuffed and wore a beige shirt and pink pants as she pleaded not guilty to all charges. She was ordered held without bail and her next hearing is scheduled for May 10.
She briefly shut her eyes as the clerk read out the charges but showed no obvious signs of emotion.
Her attorney for the arraignment, John Amabile, did not address the allegations in court.
Rodriguez’s older sister, Sigryd Rachad, also attended the arraignment and fought tears as she spoke to reporters afterward.
Marcos Rodriguez, the father of Reina Rodriguez, also became visibly upset as he discussed the case. His daughter, he said, loved horseback riding and roller skating.
He said she was “hanging out with the wrong” crowd at the time of her death.....
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Next Day Updates:
"Anger grows over fatal Cotuit crash that killed new dad" by Shelley Murphy, John R. Ellement and Amelia Nierenberg Globe Staff | Globe Correspondent July 31, 2018
FALL RIVER — When the driver who caused last weekend’s fatal crash on Cape Cod was pulled over in Barnstable on June 3, he reeked of alcohol and didn’t bother trying to deny that he had had too much to drink, but when 22-year-old Mickey A. Rivera was arraigned the next day on drunken driving charges in Barnstable District Court, neither the circumstances of his arrest nor his extensive criminal past were mentioned at all, court records show.
They didn't even suspend his driver's license?
They used to do that. I know from personal experience.
In a hearing that lasted less than five minutes, Rivera was released without bail at the recommendation of a prosecutor, even though he was free on bail at the time awaiting trial on felony charges in connection with a 2015 killing in Fall River.
On Tuesday, as anger swirled over the circumstances of Rivera’s release, the district attorney in the Fall River case blasted the state probation department for failing to inform him about Rivera’s June arrest, saying prosecutors would have moved to revoke his bail and have him arrested if they had known.....
Let the buck passing begin.
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This next article was buried at the bottom of the Metro section:
"Family mourns young mother dead after Cotuit crash" by Amelia Nierenberg Globe Correspondent August 01, 2018
NEW BEDFORD — Jocelyn Goyette had one big fear: She never wanted to die in a car. After a minor car accident a few years back, she talked about it a lot, telling family and friends that she couldn’t imagine anything more frightening.
“That is what she was afraid of most,” said Felicia Blouin, 28, one of Goyette’s closest friends.
Early Saturday morning, the 24-year-old’s fear became prophecy while riding as a passenger with a man relatively unknown to her. She died Sunday night.
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Over the last four years, Goyette and her fiancΓ©, Jorge Martell, 29, had built a life together. They were raising their 3-year-old son, Javien.
“She was an incredible mother, incredible,” Martell said. “I am just trying to do what she would have wanted me to do. Be a father and mother, play both roles for him.”
After long days at work, she would come home, and the family would spend time together, often going fishing nearby. Martell remembered how much she loved to draw, showing tattoos on his arms that she had designed.
“We were just two young people trying to live life,” he said.
The two had met five years ago, when Goyette was 19 and Martell was 24. He proposed to her at her baby shower in November 2014, and they had been living with his sister at the time of her death.
Goyette was a certified nurse’s assistant at Sacred Heart Home in New Bedford, a nursing home.
Her family is finding solace in Goyette’s decision to become an organ donor, a choice she celebrated on her Facebook page and spoke about with pride.
Her close friends knew little about Rivera. They said she had met him once or twice, but he was not a close friend.
“Nobody knows anything about this kid,” Blouin said, speaking quickly and raising her voice in anger. “I didn’t even know anything about this kid. She probably just wanted to go up there for the carnival. I think it was probably like a spontaneous thing.”
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She was referring to the Barnstable County Fair.
Martell was also confused. He and Goyette had a strong relationship, he said, and she saw Rivera only once or twice before.
So am I.
At 6:48 p.m., Goyette texted her cousin, Janeya Gomes, 21, about her evening plans.
“I was supposed to go out to Cape Cod later with this kid, but now he is switching [expletive] up on me and I’m getting mad,” she wrote.
Forgive me for saying it, but it looks like a drug deal.
Blouin spoke to Goyette at 9:46 p.m. Friday. Goyette said she was out and having fun, but would call when she got home in an hour or two.
Just after 11 p.m., Martell spoke to Goyette, who told him she was on her way home, he said.
Her family and friends don’t know what happened to her in the hour between that call and the crash, which occurred just a few minutes after midnight. They also don’t know why she was in Rivera’s car.
“She was the victim,” Martell said. “She didn’t know anything about him. She didn’t know him from a hole in the wall.”
Her family has set up Go Fund Me page online to raise money for her funeral and the ongoing care of Javien.....
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Also see: Toddler killed in South Boston crash lived life ‘full of love,’ grieving family says
