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LaPointe: Long Lake Boat Crash was 'tragic accident'

September 24, 2008 - PORTLAND -- Leaning forward on the witness stand, Robert LaPointe said he "couldn't avoid what happened" on Long Lake one night last summer.

District Attorney Stephanie Anderson kept firing questions. She suggested that LaPointe's recklessness caused the deaths of two people on Aug. 11, 2007, when his boat ran over a smaller craft.

"I got in this accident because there were no lights on in that boat," LaPointe said.

"And this was the victim's fault?" Anderson asked.

"I didn't say that," he said, his voice rising and trembling.

"Yes, I was in a tragic accident and two people lost their lives," LaPointe said. "And I'm alive to see my two children."

After eight days of sometimes grueling testimony during LaPointe's manslaughter trial in Cumberland County Superior Court, the case Friday came down to the words of the defendant himself: what he said on the stand, what he said in recorded interviews with a state investigator, and what he allegedly said to other people who have already testified.

After closing arguments are heard Monday morning, it will be up to a jury to decide whether LaPointe is guilty of manslaughter, aggravated drunken driving and reckless conduct with a dangerous weapon in the deaths of Terry Raye Trott and Suzanne Groetzinger.

On the witness stand Friday, LaPointe broke down in tears several times. He adamantly denied the two major claims made by prosecutors: that he was driving his boat too fast and that he was intoxicated.

LaPointe told jurors that he was going 30 mph in his 32-foot Sunsation Dominator when he struck Trott's 14-foot motorboat. The wreck occurred just after 9 p.m., killing Trott, 55, of Harrison and Groetzinger, 44, of Berwick.

"I was looking around me to see where other boats were," said LaPointe, 39, of Medway, Mass. "You can see the lights, you know where everybody is."

As his boat was skimming the water, "There was a violent impact on my boat, like we had hit something. I went in the water. I got ejected," LaPointe said.

The boat continued unmanned and ended up in the woods, 160 feet from the shore at Bear Point.

LaPointe said he told Maine Warden Jason Luce that he might have been going 45 or 50 mph only after Luce pressured him into making that statement.

"He was changing my story so many times," LaPointe said. "He's telling me what's happening out there, after I had already told him what happened. So I started agreeing with him."

LaPointe also said he drank three Bud Lights that day – not the six to 12 beers alleged by prosecutors. He had a sip of another beer at lunch, he said, but didn't finish the drink because his friends ordered sodas. LaPointe said he would have had four beers, but he lost one can of Bud Light when his boat's anchor came loose as he was tied up alongside a sandbar. The beer fell into the water, he said.

LaPointe also disputed the testimony of nurse Marlene Fillebrown of Bridgton Hospital, who testified that LaPointe suggested that she draw her own blood instead of his when she was about to take a sample for an alcohol content test.

J. Albert Johnson, LaPointe's lead defense lawyer, asked him whether he ever made any sort of suggestion like that.

"No," LaPointe said emphatically. "Never, I would never."

LaPointe said that Luce was badgering him into taking the test, and that he had simply asked the nurse whether she would feel comfortable submitting to a blood test if she were in his shoes.

LaPointe said that his judgment was never impaired on the day of the wreck and that he had no other alcohol besides the three beers.

Several friends and acquaintances who spent time with LaPointe testified Thursday that they had seen him at various times drinking Bud Light, but that he showed no signs of intoxication.

State chemists testified that LaPointe's blood test showed an alcohol content of 0.11 percent three hours after the crash. Chemist Stephen Pierce testified that LaPointe's blood alcohol content at the time of the crash was likely 0.15 percent. Maine's legal limit to operate a boat or a car is 0.08 percent.

During their cross-examination of Pierce, LaPointe's attorneys questioned the reliability of that test result. They noted that the sample was stored in Luce's pickup truck for 34 hours before it was delivered to the state Health and Environmental Testing Lab.

LaPointe testified that he and his passenger, Nicole Randall, had seen Trott's boat pass them, without lights, about five minutes before the crash. He said he saw the boat veer off to the right, as if headed for shore.

"I said, 'Turn your freaking lights on,'" LaPointe testified.

He said he got a cell phone call from his wife, Heather, around that time to inform him that one of his children was sick. LaPointe said he told her he would head home early in the morning. He said he throttled up and headed north on Long Lake toward his boat's slip at the Harrison Marina.

Over the course of the trial, witnesses have provided conflicting testimony as to whether the lights on Trott's boat were on. Anderson challenged LaPointe several times to explain why he throttled up, just after seeing a boat with no lights.

"Why didn't you crawl back to Harrison?" Anderson asked.

"A long time had passed. I figured he went to shore," LaPointe said.

During the cross-examination, Anderson also played taped conversations between Luce and LaPointe, recorded in the warden's truck around 10 p.m., and then at Bridgton Hospital around midnight. On the tapes, LaPointe repeatedly tells the warden that he was going about 45 mph and that he had six to eight beers over the course of the day.

LaPointe said the tapes caught only a small portion of his conversations with the warden.

At one point during the conversation in Luce's truck, LaPointe heard radio traffic about boat information and GPS coordinates.

"Did they find a boat out there?" LaPointe asked an emergency medical technician.

"I think so, but I don't know that," the technician answered.

"Oh, man, what would you be doing out in the middle of the lake with no lights?" LaPointe asked.

By TREVOR MAXWELL, Staff Writer, Portland Press Herald, September 20, 2008


Lakes: Long Lake
Regions: Sebago


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