i FARMINGTON Lumber-death trial to begin
Morning Sentinel
FARMINGTON Lumber-death trial to begin
BY BETTY JESPERSEN
Staff Writer Kennebec Journal & Morning Sentinel 02/24/2009

FARMINGTON -- A Massachusetts man goes to trial today, accused of leaving the scene of an accident in which lumber fell off his trailer and struck a car, killing its driver.

Police say Domingos Medeiros, 49, of Assonet, Mass., left the scene of a January 2008 crash that led to the death of Stephen McKenney, 55, of New Portland.

Medeiros owns two construction companies in Fall River, Mass., that sell engineered and prefabricated wood products such as trusses and I-joists. On Jan. 16 last year, police say, he was driving south with his wife on Route 27 in New Vineyard. His truck was hauling a utility trailer full of lumber after making a delivery at a job site in Kingfield.

According to court records, Medeiros picked up extra lumber at the job site to take home.

At the time of the accident, police said, about a dozen large wooden beams of varying lengths, some more than 12 feet long, fell off Medeiros' truck.

One of the beams slid off the back of the trailer and hit the windshield of a car, killing McKenney. Other pieces of lumber fell onto the road and caused a three-car pile-up, police say. Another beam struck a car with a woman and her 10-year-old daughter inside but stopped short of smashing through the windshield. They were not injured, but the car was destroyed, police said at the time.

The wood fell off after dark at a slight curve in the road, north of the Farmington town line.

Medeiros is charged with a Class C felony.

The maximum penalty is five years in prison and a fine of $5,000. Court documents state that Medeiros did not stop and that he later told police he was unaware his load was gone until he reached Farmington, where he and his wife stopped for dinner. They turned back, but the road was closed because of the accident. Medeiros left without notifying any officials about the lost load, the record states.

Franklin County Sheriff's Department investigators spent the next week searching for the truck's owner. A key to the case was the markings police found on the lumber made by a Kingfield-area sawmill owner, officers said at the time.

Police said the mill owner sold the wood to a local building contractor who had also ordered some structural members for the new house he was building from Medeiros' company, HardPine Inc.

Police eventually located and arrested Medeiros in Fall River with the assistance of local law enforcement.

The nonjury trial will be argued today before Justice Michaela Murphy in Franklin County Superior Court.

"This trial is not about having an unsafe load and it is not about whether or not Mr. Medeiros' actions caused a death. It is what happened after the accident that is the focus of the crime," Assistant Franklin County District Attorney James Andrews said on Monday.

Medeiros' attorney is Walter McKee of Augusta.

"The pivotal issue in this case, as I said from day one, is whether Mr. Medeiros knew that his load fell off and caused an accident," McKee said.

"Mr. Medeiros has said in no uncertain terms all along that he had no idea he'd lost the lumber until he arrived in Farmington. He immediately went back to try to find it and couldn't get back, as the road was cordoned off," he said.

"He had no idea the road shutdown was related to his lumber falling off," McKee said. "This was a terrible, terrible tragedy; but Mr. Medeiros didn't commit the crime of leaving the scene of an accident, as he didn't know there had been an accident."

McKee said in a past interview that Medeiros had no criminal record prior to the incident.

Betty Jespersen -- 778-6991

bjespersen@centralmaine.com

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