Plow driver testifies he saw no body in snow during crucial hours in Karen Read murder trial
Karen Read's defense team is looking to build on momentum yesterday from a surprise police witness who testified that her taillight was less damaged when he helped seize it with a warrant than it appears in photos taken after it arrived at the Canton Police Department, where authorities first towed it.
Read's defense called Brian "Lucky" Loughran, a Department of Public Works employee, to the witness stand Wednesday morning.
He testified that he passed by 34 Fairview Road, the home of Brian Albert, where John O'Keefe was found dead in the snow, multiple times between 2:40 a.m. and around 6 a.m. Prosecutors allege Read hit her boyfriend outside and drove off, leaving him to die amid blizzard conditions.
Loughran said he had good visibility despite the blizzard conditions due to multiple lights on the plow truck and a high seat. Asked if he saw a body in the snow, he said no -- but he added that he did see a Ford Edge SUV parked outside the address on a later pass around 3:30 a.m.
KAREN READ'S SILENCE IN MURDER TRIAL RAISES STAKES FOR DEFENSE
He said it stood out to him because he was from the area and knew the Albert family -- and he had to maneuver around the vehicle as he cleared the road.
"For as long as I can remember, they have never parked a vehicle in front of their house," Loughran testified. "They've always had enough ample parking in the driveway."
Special prosecutor Hank Brennan asked Loughran during cross-examination about purported threats from an online blogger and inconsistencies in his timeline.
Loughran said he never felt threatened by the blogger and denied having a bad memory when Brennan confronted him with multiple statements that offered different times for when the river passed by Fairview Road.
Then Brennan played police dashcam video taken outside 34 Fairview that showed the heavy snowfall and the distance between the house there and Cedarcrest Road, where a plow truck drove by multiple times in the background.
Loughran agreed that some of the passes were him in the plow, dubbed "Frankentruck," but said he couldn't be sure at other moments.
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The taillight fragments were not found at the crime scene until later, too, and her defense's implication is that they could have been planted there.
Wednesday marks the 27th day of Read's retrial on murder and other charges in the January 2022 death of O'Keefe, her then-boyfriend, a Boston police officer, and an uncle who had taken in the orphaned children of his late sister and brother-in-law.
She denies hitting him with her 2021 Lexus SUV and leaving the scene, where he died with head trauma and signs of hypothermia. The defense says no collision happened and something or someone else caused his injuries.
On Tuesday, Dighton Police Sgt. Nicholas Barros testified that when he arrived at Read's parents' house to help state police confiscate the vehicle, fewer pieces of taillight were missing from the cracked taillight.
He said that a photo of Read's SUV taken at the Canton Police Department's sallyport – a secure garage – did "absolutely not" show the taillight in the same condition it was in when he saw it in the driveway.
Barros surprised the courtroom when he testified for the commonwealth during Read's first trial, which ended with a deadlocked jury last year. This time, he was a defense witness.
"He was a devastating witness who has the [district attorney's] case on life support," said Mark Bederow, a New York City-based defense attorney who is closely following the case.
He said special prosecutor Hank Brennan conducted an "excellent" cross-examination, showing Barros and the jury images of Read's taillight taken over the course of the day, before police took her SUV, but defense attorney Alan Jackson performed equally well in redirect questioning.
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"The sum total is that Barros is 100% unequivocal: the taillight he saw on January 29 was not anywhere near as destroyed as when the [Massachusetts State Police] had it," he said.
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Grace Edwards, a Massachusetts defense attorney who is also following the case, called Barros' testimony a "bombshell" and said the surprise in trial 1 was "a clear Brady violation" – referring to a rule that prosecutors must share exculpatory evidence with the defense.
"The fact that a police officer drove to the Omni Hotel to meet with the defense team of a defendant on trial for murder clearly indicates he wanted to tell his story," she told Fox News Digital.
Dr. Judson Welcher, an expert for the prosecution, explained to jurors how he found that O'Keefe appeared to have been struck in the arm by the back corner of Read's SUV before he fell to the ground and fractured the back of his skull.
Christina Hanley, an analyst with the state police's crime lab, testified that investigators recovered plastic fragments from O'Keefe's clothing that were a match with the broken taillight or something made of the same material.
Read could face life in prison if convicted of the top charge, second-degree murder.
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