Mother blames state for fatal crash

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): The family of a Scarborough woman killed in a truck accident on I-95 July 29 blames state officials for her death.

Pat LaNigra, the mother of Tina Turcotte, 40, who was killed when a tractor-trailer crushed her car, said her loss has been “devastating” and made worse by knowing it could have been avoided if state legislators had crafted better laws and police had done a better job of enforcing the ones already in place.

“This would have been prevented had the state backed up its own laws,” LaNigra said. “If their job was done the way it should have been done, Tina would still be here today.”

The truck driver, Scott Hewitt, 32, of Caribou has an extensive record of bad driving, including more than 60 convictions and more than 20 suspensions of his driver’s license. He had also been involved in a fatal crash in 1994, after which he pled guilty to three minor trucking violations and received a six-month suspended jail sentence.

“He was a bomb waiting to explode,” LaNigra said. Legislators and police are “allowing people to die on the roads and they’re just slapping hands” of bad drivers.

Hewitt, who was charged with nine misdemeanor crimes and two non-criminal traffic infractions in connection with the crash, has not been charged with anything that holds him responsible for Turcotte's death.

Hewitt has been charged with operating after suspension, possession of a suspended driver’s license, operating without authority, operating after being placed out of service, two counts of falsifying duty status records, operating without a medical certificate, operating while in possession of a radar detector, operating while in possession of a controlled substance, operating an unregistered motor vehicle and operating without insurance.

No felony charges

Although police found marijuana in the cab of Hewitt's truck, and he tested positive for it in a blood test, Kennebec County District Attorney Evert Fowle said there is no evidence Hewitt was impaired at the time of the crash.

The accident report from the Maine State Police indicated Turcotte and a tractor-trailer cab in front of her were slowing down because traffic was backed up in front of them. But Hewitt, who driving a tractor-trailer behind Turcotte, did not slow down, according to the report.

An assistant district attorney and four police officers at the scene, including one specially trained to recognize people under the influence of drugs, did not believe Hewitt was impaired, Fowle said, noting that marijuana can stay in a person’s bloodstream for as much as a month after a person uses the drug.

“We’re looking for any possible way to prosecute the more serious crime of manslaughter,” Fowle said.

But that’s not possible, because Hewitt’s behavior does not meet the legal definitions of “recklessness” or “criminal negligence,” Fowle said.

Both of those require a person be proven to have made a “gross deviation” from the “standard of care” an average person would use under the same circumstances, and Hewitt’s behavior was not that, Fowle said.

Fowle said the law does not allow him to consider the circumstances under which Hewitt was driving. “We’re looking at the actual driving,” Fowle said, “the operation of the vehicle itself” to determine whether the driving was reckless.

“What he was was inattentive,” Fowle said. “Inattentiveness has never been a basis” for a prosecution for vehicular manslaughter in Maine, he said.

Fowle said Hewitt is not being charged with being a habitual offender because the Secretary of State’s office, which handles driver records, did not classify him as such.

And he is not being charged with driving to endanger because that requires a similar standard of proof to manslaughter, Fowle said.

Fowle said he has talked to Turcotte’s family and said he answered the questions they had. “I told them to come back if they had more questions,” Fowle said.

He said he felt he owed them a personal explanation of the charges.

“It’s not an easy decision to make,” Fowle said. The only worse decision, he said, would be to “bring a charge that’s not supported by the evidence or the law.”

Husband hires lawyer

Scott Turcotte, Tina Turcotte's husband, referred all questions to his attorney, Michael Vaillancourt of the South Portland firm Ainsworth, Thelin, Chamberlain and Raftice. Vaillancourt said a lawsuit is “a possibility,” but would not indicate who might be the defendant in such a suit.

“Scott (Turcotte) was very disappointed” in Fowle’s decision not to charge Hewitt with manslaughter, and believes the evidence shows “Tina’s death being caused by Mr. Hewitt,” Vaillancourt said.

Scott Turcotte is interested in changing state laws, as are his parents-in-law, Pat LaNigra and her husband, Tina’s stepfather, Bob LaNigra.

But they are pained by the thought that “this could have been prevented” by applying the state’s existing laws more effectively, Pat LaNigra said.

Noting that Hewitt had possession of his driver’s license, which had been suspended, at the time of the crash, she and her husband ridiculed the state’s efforts to confiscate the license by mailing him notices.

Bob LaNigra said when a couple gets a divorce, a sheriff’s deputy comes to each person’s home and serves them papers they have to sign right there.

He wondered why that same care was not taken to get licenses back. He wants deputies to “physically remove the license as well as the license plates” from the vehicle of a person whose license is suspended.

And he said that if Hewitt had not had his license, a New York state trooper who stopped him the day before the fatal crash would have stopped him from driving on to Maine.

‘Someone’s not doing their job’

The LaNigras are working with Gov. John Baldacci and several state legislators, including Sen. William Diamond, D-Windham, a former Maine secretary of state, to change the laws.

But they are upset that other state initiatives appear to be getting more attention, including the newly hiked cigarette tax, which doubled Monday, going up to $2 per pack.

“Smoking isn’t even against the law,” said Pat LaNigra.

The couple wants stiffer penalties for bad drivers, and fears that politics will get in the way.

“Someone’s not doing their job. The laws aren’t strict enough,” said Pat LaNigra.

If a police officer is not sent to the home of a suspended driver to confiscate their license, Bob LaNigra said the person should have a short time to mail it in, and should face additional criminal charges for failure to do so.

He wants increased enforcement efforts on the roads and increased fines for breaking laws, saying the revenue from the fines could pay for the additional staff required to improve patrols and truck inspections.

He said in 1996 the Legislature decreased mandatory jail sentences from six months to a year, citing jail overcrowding, and refused to increase fines because people from northern Maine couldn’t afford them.

Though the fines have been increased since, he worries that any law changes “won’t be strict enough because they’ll be compromised.”

Pat LaNigra said fines should be high, and had little sympathy for people who couldn’t afford them. She said Hewitt’s friends and family members knew he was driving illegally, and suggested he hit them up for financial help to pay the fines. She said eventually they would stop helping him and he would be forced off the road.

Into the future

Both Pat and Bob LaNigra are concerned that, though Hewitt may face some jail time, he will eventually be eligible for his license again.

“He’s a bomb waiting to blow up. He’s a murderer waiting to kill,” said Pat LaNigra. “Sixty-eight convictions, kills two people and there’s no law to get this man off the road forever.”

She is concerned the state is sending the wrong message to young drivers, who, she noted, risk losing their licenses for running stop signs.

And she doesn’t believe Fowle’s allegation that Hewitt was merely “inattentive.”

“How long can you be inattentive” that you don’t see a car and a tractor-trailer cab in front of you, she asked. “It’s not inattentiveness; it’s incompetency.”

She thinks a proposal from the state to publicize the worst 100 drivers in Maine is too little, given that there are tens of thousands of people with suspended driver’s licenses, many of them with five or more suspensions.

“This is a no-brainer,” she said, asking that the list be expanded to at least 1,000, or possibly even more.

“These people are on the road constantly, not just truckers,” she said.

She wants people to write to the governor and their legislators, and to remember “the people that you vote in were partially responsible for this.”

She noted that not all truckers are bad drivers, and that not all bad drivers are truckers. “Tina’s father was a trucker for 25 years and he never once got a suspension,” she said.

The couple and Tina’s husband are planning a memorial charity dance on Friday, Oct. 21, at the Asylum in Portland, to benefit the Susan Komen Breast Cancer Fund and Lab-Quest, in honor of Tina’s having survived breast cancer. This was her fifth year cancer-free.

And on Sunday, Oct. 30, the Great Pumpkin Race in Saco, which Bob LaNigra has organized since 1978, will split its proceeds with its usual beneficiary, the American Lung Association, and charities close to Tina’s heart. “She was a great animal lover,” said Pat LaNigra. The charities receiving money in Tina’s honor have not yet been determined.

Pat LaNigra is still pained and bitter. “I’ve just lost so much faith in the system,” she said. “This would have been prevented if the state was doing its job.”

Editorial: Give them food

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): Young people need good food to help them grow up to be healthy, strong adults. It’s up to adults to give them that food, and to help steer them away from unhealthy choices.

The Scarborough Board of Education has temporarily suspended a state requirement that all food served on school grounds meet some qualifications as minimally nutritious.

And while that’s fine for a very short period of time, the board should, as it plans to, review the food served on school grounds and at school functions, with an eye toward making the available choices good for kids.

The board has suspended the rule, recently imposed by the state, to avoid surprising booster groups for sports teams and extra-curricular groups, who often sell candy and baked treats to raise money, and have likely bought sugary goodies to sell at games and activities.

In the past, some groups in town have even sold Krispy Kreme glazed doughnuts to raise money.

And while the money goes to a good cause, the food should, too. Schools and school groups should not be in the business of selling goodies of negligible nutritional value.

What’s defined as non-nutritious food is quite lenient. A food must provide at least 5 percent of the federally recommended daily intake of at least one of eight nutrients: protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, niacin, riboflavin, thiamin, calcium and iron.

Anything that provides less than 5 percent of all of those nutrients is fairly called “junk food,” and is not what adults should be serving children, no matter the setting.

The guidelines, as Dr. Lisa Letourneau of the Scarborough Wellness Initiative notes in a Page 1 article, still allow some chips and candy bars to be sold in schools.

School meal programs started in Europe in the 1700s, and moved to the United States in the 1800s, with the idea of providing children at least one nutritious meal each day.

That is still a vitally important goal, and should not be forgotten, especially with childhood obesity at an all-time high and rising. Our kids are unhealthy, and we need to fix the problem, not point fingers at others.

Adults in all venues – home, school, jobs and after-school activities – are responsible for helping children grow up healthy.

Schools are an important factor in this because they are places communities send their children to learn good habits, smart ways to approach the world and positive behaviors that will help them be productive members of society as adults.

The goal of school lunch programs should not be to provide children with junk food, nor to make money for the school. It is also questionable whether school lunch programs should be required to pay for themselves, as is the case in Scarborough and common elsewhere.

The school lunch programs should focus on providing healthy, nutritious foods at a reasonable cost.

If children – or parents – want food other than what a school provides, they can provide it with their own money from supermarkets or other stores. It may cause a loss in revenue for schools, but lunch should be about nourishing children’s bodies in an environment that also enriches their minds.

The same goes for food sales by school-related programs, like booster clubs. The clubs exist for the benefit of children. If good food won't raise the money they need, perhaps the boosters could look to the dozens of local organizations that raise money without selling food for ideas, such as craft sales, event programs and raffles.

While candy is a sure seller, that’s part of the problem, not part of the solution. The Scarborough school board should ban non-nutritious food sales by school lunches, boosters and other groups using school facilities.

Jeff Inglis, editor

Stolen boat beached with lobsters aboard

Published in the Current

SOUTH PORTLAND (Sep 22, 2005): A boat stolen from a Portland pier Saturday night was beached early Sunday morning on Willard Beach, with live lobsters crawling around the boat.

The “Thorfinn Olaf,” named after the father of owner Mark Nordli of Portland, had been left at Hobson’s Wharf at 2 p.m. Saturday when Nordli finished hauling his traps.

When he returned to the wharf at 5 a.m. Sunday, he found the boat missing. Nordli called the Portland police and then the Coast Guard.

While he was on the phone with the Coast Guard, they were also getting a call from the South Portland police saying the boat had been found on Willard Beach.

Officer Kevin Battle, also the city’s deputy harbormaster, estimated, based on the location of the boat, that it was beached around the time of the high tide, between 1 and 2 a.m.

Nordli said when he arrived at about 7:30 a.m. Battle was already there, and there were “lobsters running around the boat,” leading Battle and Nordli to believe the thieves had pulled some traps overnight. Nordli corraled the lobsters and took them away.

The only thing missing was a battery-powered drill, and the boat did not sustain much damage, at least some of which Nordli attributed to wave action rather than vandals.

Several unmarked gas cans with fuel in them were on Nordli’s boat, leading him to suspect the people who stole his boat lifted gas from other boats first. Police have no suspects in the theft.

“People get drunk on Saturday night, and they say ‘let’s go steal a boat,’ I guess,” Nordli said.

With help from his son, Nordli was able to refloat the boat around 9 a.m. on the incoming tide that same day. He said he might be out fishing that afternoon.

Cigarettes stolen from local store

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): The night after Maine’s cigarette tax increase took effect, a Scarborough business felt the effects.

Thieves bashed in the glass door of Eight Corners Pizza at 2:02 a.m. Tuesday morning and in about 45 seconds made off with $750 to $800 worth of cigarettes, according to owner Peter Walsh Jr.

Two minutes after the store’s alarm went off, Scarborough police Officer Jeff Greenleaf arrived, and found the thieves already gone.

The thieves had driven right up to the door, smashed it in with “a bowling-ball-sized rock,” and one person jumped onto and then over the counter to get to the cigarette rack, Walsh said.

He guessed the person had a large bag and just shoveled packs of cigarettes into the bag, because there were cigarette packs on the floor that had been stepped on.

Walsh estimated that 150 to 200 packs were taken, with a retail value – including the new $2 tax, double the old tax – of between $750 and $800. He blamed the tax increase for the theft, saying he pays about $50 a carton, but a thief could sell a stolen carton “for 20 bucks and people will but it.”

He said police estimated the thief was in the store for 30 to 45 seconds, while a getaway driver waited outside. Scarborough and South Portland police were alerted immediately, but did not spot a car.

Walsh said the thief did not touch the lottery tickets or alcoholic beverages right next to the counter, and said there is no cash ever kept in the store after closing.

The thieves did $1,500 in damage to the store, Walsh said. He is considering installing a steel gate across his door, but thinks that’s a little much for Scarborough. “I don’t want to see it, do you?” he asked.

It is the second time thieves have hit the store. In 2002, people who broke in and stole cigarettes were caught red-handed that night, he said.

Police got various pieces of evidence from the store after Tuesday’s break-in, Walsh said. “We’re going to catch them.”

Portland Players celebrate 75th season

Published in the Current

SCARBOROUGH (Sep 22, 2005): As the curtain rises Friday evening at the Portland Players in South Portland, the historic theater will be starting its 75th season, with residents of Scarborough, Cape Elizabeth and South Portland appearing throughout the show, as always.

The theater opened in 1931 as the Portland Dramatic Guild in a playhouse in Portland. No productions were performed from 1942 to 1946 as a result of World War II, but after the war the theater came back to life.

“When I first came here it was the only show in town – that and the symphony,” said Betty Longbottom, who has been involved with the theater since the 1950s.

“We’ve just kept going and going,” said Longbottom, now the theater’s vice president for artistic development.

The theater world has changed in Maine. Now, “the competition for the theatrical dollar is fierce,” she said.

In the late 1960s, the theater, which had been in a building on Preble Street in Portland, was told by the landlord that it would have to move.

“Before we knew it the seats were gone," Longbottom said.

She was in the last show in the Preble Street theater – “Fallen Angels” by Noel Coward – and the first one in its home ever since, a former movie theater on Cottage Road in South Portland, “Royal Gambit” by Hermann Gressieker.

The theater has never had an endowment, but has managed to keep going year-to-year. “There were times when we would worry about it, but we’re still hanging in there,” said Longbottom, who recently moved to Portland from a home in Cape Elizabeth near the South Portland line.

A key has been finding good directors who know how to cast, she said. That has remained constant, though audience demands have changed.

The theater used to do two musicals a season, and now does three. “Straight plays are not that well attended,” Longbottom said.

Donations and ticket sales used to cover most of the expenses, but the theater is now seeking grants for projects, including roof repair.

And they know “anything with kids in it is going to sell,” she said.

Jean Maginnis, a South Portland resident who is on the theater’s board of trustees, got involved through her son, who is now 21 and a college senior studying theater.

When he was 12, Maginnis was looking for a summer activity for him that he could walk to. Having gotten so much from the theater, “I feel like I need to give back,” she said.

There are no longer any summer kids’ programs, but Maginnis is considering restarting them.

As it is, of the 49 people in “Oliver!” which opens Friday, about half are kids, who “have given up most of their summers,” Maginnis said. Their parents have, too, driving them to and from rehearsals.

She is planning a large celebration event in April, and at that time may kick off an endowment fund-raising drive.

The charm of the theater is the local people in it, she said. “It’s your insurance man by day who comes out in a costume and sings and dances by night.”

In another 75 years, the theater may still be performing the shows now considered classics: “Nobody’s writing anything,” Longbottom said.

But there are always new possibilities. The upcoming season includes the theater’s first-ever production of “Gypsy” and its first female version of “The Odd Couple.”

“We do it because we love it,” Maginnis said.

Local cast members in “Oliver!” are:

From Cape Elizabeth, Sam Spicer, Alanah Lockwood, Ana Ryden, Griffin Carpenter, Tim Hartel, Chris Bowman and Brianna Bowman;

From Scarborough: Stephanie Hughes, Martha Lopez, Colin Swords and Owen Kelley;

From South Portland: Lisa Rockwell, Jaimie Schwartz, Jamie Lupien, Jennifer Eaton-Burke, Eliza Schwartz, Ali Schwartz, Jonny Lewis, Jack Cutler, William Cleaves and Mark Crawford.