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Boat Driver Indicted in Long Lake Deaths

October 09, 2007 - PORTLAND - Law enforcement authorities are negotiating the surrender of the Massachusetts man who they say was driving a high-performance boat involved in a fatal collision on Long Lake in Harrison in August.

"If he doesn't want to do that, we will go down there and arrest him ... we will contact Massachusetts authorities and see that happens," Cumberland County District Attorney Stephanie Anderson said Friday. "We would much rather he just come up here and turn himself in."

That needs to happen, "sooner rather than later," Anderson said of 38-year-old Robert LaPointe Jr. of Medway, Mass.

LaPointe was piloting a 32-foot, twin-engine Sunsation Dominator on the lake when it hit a 14-foot fiberglass motorboat owned by Terry Raye Trott of Naples.

Trott, 55, and his companion, Suzanne Groetzinger, 44 of Berwick and Norway, were both killed in the Aug. 11 collision. Maine Warden Service divers recovered their bodies from the lake bottom three days later.

A Cumberland County grand jury on Thursday indicted LaPointe on two counts of manslaughter, four counts of aggravated operating under the influence and one count of reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon.

The two counts of manslaughter are each punishable by up to 20 years in prison. The four counts of aggravated OUI each carry a maximum six-month jail term and a $2,100 fine.

Anderson said LaPointe's blood-alcohol content was .11 percent. Maine's legal limit to operate a motor vehicle or a boat is .08 percent. Anderson said she charged LaPointe with four OUI counts because state fish and game, and motor vehicle, laws allow for the charge when a death occurs - and in this case there were two deaths. The dangerous weapon charge is a result of LaPointe allegedly being intoxicated, operating at an excessive speed, failing to maintain adequate visibility and failing to yield to another watercraft as he piloted his boat with dual 435-horsepower engines down the lake at 9 p.m.
LaPointe's Boston-based defense attorney, J. Albert Johnson, rebutted the charges.

"Everyone ought to keep in mind the constitutionally guaranteed presumption of innocence of Robert LaPointe," Johnson said. "The evidence will show that none of the charges presently brought by the district attorney can be substantiated."

A call to LaPointe's Massachusetts home was not returned Friday.

Johnson would not comment on whether, when or how LaPointe would come to Maine to be booked on the charges he faces here.

"Negative pretrial prejudicial publicity is a very dangerous thing," Johnson said.

Riding with LaPointe on the night of the crash was 19-year-old Nicole Randall of Bridgton. Both she and LaPointe were ejected from the boat in the collision and swam more than 1,000 feet to shore. Neither was wearing a life jacket nor was seriously injured, Anderson said. "They had quite a swim," she said.

Anderson said Randall's father and LaPointe are friends, and LaPointe was heading back toward the Randalls' marina in Harrison where he docked his boat. "He was a family friend, a customer," Anderson said of why Randall and LaPointe were traveling together.

Randall was not charged in the incident.
Warden Service divers recovered nearly all the pieces from Trott's boat.

"They put it back together with duct tape and clamps and they were able to do ... a reenactment," Anderson said. Using paint transfers and propeller cuts, investigators were able to determine the path the 32-foot boat took over the smaller one, Anderson said.

She praised the Warden Service. "They worked on this case tirelessly," she said.

The investigation of the crash was the largest and most complex ever conducted by the Warden Service, according to a release issued by the service Thursday.

"Wardens interviewed dozens of witnesses, spent countless hours piecing together the crash in order to present a vivid picture of just what occurred that evening," said Col. Tom Santaguida, chief of the Maine Warden Service. "There was an incredible amount of information surrounding this case, and our investigators were able to pull the facts all together to present to the DA's office."

The state's burden of proof in the case will be to show that LaPointe's behavior was a "gross deviation from standard behavior," Anderson said.
"Number one, he was intoxicated. Number two, he was going way too fast for the situation," Anderson said. "You don't drive 45 miles an hour in pitch blackness on a lake in Maine. I think when you are driving at night you have to go very, very slow."

SOURCE: Sun-Journal

DATE: 10-06-2007

Lakes: Long Lake
Regions: Sebago


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