BOSTON (WHDH) - Jurors got their first look at surveillance footage showing the moments leading up to the chain reaction crash that killed 2-year-old Colin McGrath in South Boston four years ago, in addition to hearing from the victim’s mother and nanny on Thursday.
Colin’s nanny, who was watching the boy and his 4-year-old sister at the time of the crash, took the stand and put the footage in context for the jurors, who are weighing charges against Charlene Casey.
Casey allegedly caused a chain reaction crash in July 2018 when she ran a stop sign, hitting a van that was pushed into the children and nanny, who were on the sidewalk at the time.
The nanny, Tracey Lewis, told jurors in a tearful testimony that she had just taken the kids to Dunkin’, where she bought them food and drinks. They were walking on the sidewalk in South Boston, with the nanny pushing Colin’s stroller and his sister walking closely behind them, with Colin full of energy.
“And he was telling me he’s not going to take a nap and I was telling him he was,” Lewis recalled.
In the surveillance footage, the group is seen walking when the customers inside the nearby shop rush to the window to see what happened. The nanny said she saw the van catapulting toward her after it hit the other car, before landing on top of the stroller and Colin. She said she screamed at the driver to back up.
“The driver of the van got out and he started telling me his buddy’s gonna call for help,” she said. “And I started screaming at him to get the van off of Colin and (the sister) was screaming because she was calling for her dad.”
The footage also showed a different angle of the crash, depicting a white car and a van colliding at an intersection. Prosecutors said Casey, the driver of the white car, caused the crash when she failed to stop at a stop sign, hitting the van that hit the group.
Colin’s mother, Dr. Kerri McGrath, also took the stand Thursday, describing the moment she learned of the crash. A Mass General primary care physician, she said she was at work when she received a call from Lewis.
“I grabbed all of my stuff and just left,” McGrath said. “And I yelled to another doctor to go cover me.”
She said rushed to Boston Medical Center after Lewis’s call, and found medical staff had done all they could do to try and save her son.
“They were doing very gentle CPR, which is like a thing you sort of do out of respect until the family gets there,” McGrath said.
She explained that when she realized the doctors had checked for internal injuries, she came to a difficult decision.
“And when she said ‘yes,’ I said ‘just stop and let me hold him,'” McGrath told the court.
Colin was later pronounced dead at BMC. His sister suffered broken bones, a lacerated liver and other injuries. The nanny was not seriously injured.
Seven witnesses, all in law enforcement, also took the stand.
“This crash was caused by operator error,” said Boston Police Detective William Zubrin, who worked to investigate the crash. “That operator error was Ms. Charlene Casey’s failure to stop for the van.”
Zubrin also testified that the van, driven by Michael Racioppi, was speeding at the time of the accident, going 30 in a 25 mph zone. However, he emphasized that speed was not a factor in the crash and that the van had the right of way when Casey pulled into the road.
He said that even if the driver was going 25, the impact at the intersection made it impossible for Racioppi to avoid hitting the children.
“The steering was broken on the van, it went down the street, mounted the sidewalk and hit the pedestrians,” Zubrin said.
Casey, who has pled not guilty in the case, is not expected to testify.
The jurors will return Tuesday, when they’re set to visit the intersection where the crash happened.
(Copyright (c) 2024 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)