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Fatal Crash Suspect Pleads Not Guilty
By Jordan Cuddemi
Valley News Staff Writer
Monday, June 13, 2016
LEBANON NH SPRINGFIELD VT JAMES RIBIERO
White River Junction — The 21-year-old Springfield, Vt., driver accused of hitting and killing a pedestrian and then leaving the scene of the crash told police he knew he hit someone but opted to drive home because he “didn’t know what to do,” according to a state police affidavit in the case.
James Ribeiro also told police that the incident happened when he glanced down at his cellphone, which was in the cup holder of his car, according to the affidavit.
“He stated that he looked down at the phone and when he looked back up, it was too late,” Sgt. Jeremy Fitzgibbons wrote in an affidavit filed in Windsor Superior Court in White River Junction.
Police allege Ribeiro struck two pedestrians on the evening of June 9 on River Street in Springfield, killing 37-year-old Steven Lapre. Police say 31-year-old Pamela Runnells suffered serious injuries; she complained of pain in her right leg and hip immediately after the accident. She was transported to Springfield Hospital and subsequently airlifted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
A DHMC spokesperson on Monday said he wasn’t authorized to release an update on Runnells’ condition.
Ribeiro faces two felony charges of leaving the scene of a crash with a fatality resulting. He pleaded not guilty to both counts on Friday in Windsor Superior Court.
Ribeiro was released on $25,000 bail and conditions, including that he have no contact with Runnells.
On Monday, Windsor County State’s Attorney David Cahill said Ribeiro faces two counts because Vermont’s “leaving the scene” statute has two prongs, or parts. A prosecutor must prove that an individual failed to stop and render aid to the person who was injured or that the person failed to stop and give required information to law enforcement, including license, registration and insurance information.
“I charged one count per prong. But it’s not double jeopardy because even if a jury concluded that he violated both prongs, only one conviction would be entered,” Cahill said on Monday.
A message left for Ribeiro’s attorney, Jordana Levine, wasn’t returned.
According to the affidavit, police received a call around 10 p.m. on Thursday about a male subject who was “down” in the roadway on River Street. While on scene, police learned that a “distraught subject” who claimed he hit two people with his car was in the lobby of the Springfield Police Department.
Ribeiro told police he was having a text message conversation with his girlfriend at the McDonald’s off Route 11 in Springfield before the crash. When he left the fast-food restaurant, he said, he put his phone in the cup holder. While driving along River Street, he told police he heard his phone vibrate, which prompted him to look down at it, according to the affidavit.
After the crash — but before he turned himself in at the police station — Ribeiro told police he smoked marijuana, according to the affidavit. The investigation is ongoing.
Jordan Cuddemi can be reached at jcuddemi@vnews.com or 603-727-3248.
"After the crash — but before he turned himself in at the police station — Ribeiro told police he smoked marijuana, according to the affidavit. The investigation is ongoing."
ReplyDeleteHighly unlikely that someone who refused to render aid to two people that he smashed was not using drugs before he hit the victims. Probably fled because he was under the influence and possible had the evidence in the car or on him. Doubtful that he would flee home and start drinking or drugging while knowing he just hit two people and would likely be found out. GUILTY!!!
Unlikely . . . probably . . . doubtful . . . GUILTY!!!
DeleteNice. You should be in charge.
The point Phil is that he did flee leaving two individuals writhing on a dark road with one dying. Two hours later he shows up blaming his cellphone for vibrating and claiming he decided to smoke some dope only AFTER hitting two people, killing one person. He has already admitted to fleeing the scene. I doubt anyone would toke up just before turning himself in for vehicular homicide and I doubt anyone, even with damaged brain cells, believes his story. The truth is more likely that he was under the influence when he hit the pedestrians and that he fled, ignoring their fate, to cover that fact up. No jury is going to believe his fairy tale but a liberal Vermont judge just might let him get away with his nonsensical tale. Guilty, guilty, guilty.
DeleteIf PC isn't writing about angry monkeys, he's out there defending the inexcusable actions of the town's deviants and criminals. A worthy candidate for an appointment to the Vermont bench!!
DeleteClearly we should lobby our representatives in government to quickly make Mary Jane legal so we can all enjoy the benefits.... ahhhhhh.....
ReplyDeletePleading not guilty to crimes he confessed to. He MUST be stoned.
ReplyDeleteWhy would anyone plead guilty to a crime in this liberal ass state. All he has to do is "show remorse" and the liberal judge will set him free....with restrictions of course....not
DeleteHe hit 2 known heroin addicts who were in the middle of the road- not near a cross walk and it was dark.
ReplyDeleteWell, as long as it's druggies killing druggies I guess the rest of us shouldn't be too worried, right? (At this point I'm not 100% sure I'm joking.) Perhaps it's just the jaded, cynical former drug counselor in me talking, but after years of watching people kill themselves and each other because of dope you begin to see these things as inevitable.
DeleteThe woman that survived recently almost killed an entire family while she was recklessly driving under the influence of heroin...Karma!
Deleteand not to mention pot and heroin are on 2 completely different levels, as a former drug counselor you should know this. Pot doesn't make you a crazy lunatic, it can make you dumb but not crazy!
DeleteLet's think about this... He is 21 , 21!! He was scared! That would be my thought on why he left. Let's have a little compassion. Yes a man was killed and a woman hurt. And I am very sorry for that. My heart goes out to all of them!
ReplyDeleteI'm going to add something to my earlier reply, as I believe it is necessary. I once worked at the #1 ranked drug treatment unit in the country. We even beat Betty Ford, because we had a 20% success rate. That's right, only 20% made us the best in America. That is how bad this is. Face it, Mr. and Mrs. America, if your son/daughter mother/father are getting high, between 80 and 90% of them will die in their addiction. Period. The only question is, how many people will they injure or kill before they do. It really makes me sick, especially when I hear people talk of legalization. This country needs a real war on drugs, with the death penalty for all dealers, from the street level on up. Addicts should receive treatment, (as ineffective as it is) but if you really want to stop this, the dealers must be eradicated.
ReplyDeleteSo, legalize and "eradicate" the dealers.Tax dollars raised can provide treatment for many more addicted individuals.
DeleteYou're a voice in the wilderness, 6:31. Springfield has totally bought into the "War on Drugs" and will not, in my opinion, change its mind. I will be very happy if they prove me wrong.
DeleteThe driver's version of the incident is believable. Irrational, but believable. The distraction = unthinking reaction. Failure to stop = panic producing cowardice. Smoke = foolish choice for achieving calm. Nothing praiseworthy there, nothing evil either.
ReplyDeleteSigning as 'anonymous' to avoid suit for character assassination.
Sure, legalize and then WE ALL become the dealers. Maybe YOU can handle being the cause of misery and death, but leave me out of it! When will you neo-hippies wake up! The Summer of Love crashed and burned by 1968. My cousin was one of the Merry Pranksters out in California back then. She married a guy in the Hell's Angels. She was so disgusted by the end of it all that she became a cop! Tax dollars raised FROM drugs to pay for treatment FOR drugs? Are you nuts? Yeah, pot just makes you dumb enough to kill someone. Oops! That alone should be enough to convince any sane rational individual of the folly of legalization.
ReplyDeleteSo, we should reinstate alcohol prohibition?
DeleteYou mean the folly of prohibition....
Delete11:49, when alcohol was illegal, we had EXACTLY the same problems that all today's banned substances produce. I don't know how you'd feel knowing that Nixon invented the War On Drugs to neutralize the civil rights movement (crack cocaine became the stereotype for blacks and marijuana for the anti-war protesters).
ReplyDeleteAs a result of our uncritical submission to manipulation, we do not pay attention to the facts about substance abuse: Addiction to alcohol is 300 percent greater than heroin addiction, but because it can be obtained legally, the victim and law enforcement costs associated with it are far lower. Experience in other countries shows that decriminalization leads to reduced use (even kids stop using it after they experiment) and of course far lower policing costs. When they are legalized, all the money that was spent on DEA-type activities could be used (but probably won't be; after all, this is America) for prevention and recovery programs. Properly legalized, heroin, etc., would be tightly controlled as to purity, advertising (recruiting more users) would be banned, and pricing would be so low as to dry up any black market.
But as we want to live in fear and disgust, this is not going to happen.
Wow! Maybe addiction to alcohol is 300% greater because it's LEGAL! I wonder how bad it would be if you could get a bag of smack at any gas station! No other country in the civilized world, no matter how liberal has been crazy or stupid enough to legalize heroin. Cheap, pure heroin? I remember the cheap pure cocaine in the 80s. A lot of my friends died from it. Sure, if you make illegal things legal law enforcement expenses drop. Duh. If there were no laws at all, we wouldn't need cops. Woohooo! But I guarantee the world would be a place even you wouldn't want to live in. Also, if drugs are so harmless, why would there be a need for treatment programs? Are you so blinded by your antiquated ideology that you can't see THAT contradiction?
ReplyDelete4:50, do you recommend making alcohol illegal again? Yeah, based on what most of us know, that would be a really stupid idea. So would banning solvents, White-Out correction fluid and Whip-It cans (the "huffing" problem).
ReplyDeleteWe don't deal with substance abuse by banning or criminalizing it. We deal with the people who find that overdoing substances is preferable to what else is going on with them.
You're wrong about "legalizing" heroin. Read "Legalize it All," in the May Harper's (at the library). Learn why The War On Drugs was never meant to be a war on substance abuse.
For the last dozen years, Portugal has stopped arresting for use and personal possession of any previously banned substances-- and use rates have dropped. (They have not addressed the marketing problem, but the article does.)
And if you look at the costs (social and otherwise) of heroin addiction vs. alcohol addiction, you will find that the costs of the latter are not 300 times greater than those of heroin.
Decriminalization is not the same as legalization. In Colorado, teenage drug use, which had been on the decline for years, has skyrocketed since legalization. I could care less about someone else's opinion about the politics, whether real or imagined. Tricky Dick is dead, the 60s are over, and we have serious problem in this country. I have absolutely no need whatsoever to read about the issue. My personal and professional experience is more than sufficient. Getting back to the original topic; one person is dead, and another crippled because of drug use. Legalization would not have stopped that. You have not listened to a word I or anyone else has said. You simply revert to the standard far-left talking points. You, sir, are a dinosaur, and your kind are why I, and so many others, have left the Democratic Party.
ReplyDeleteIf your professional life dealt with addiction, keep in mind that your experience with it was with the 100% for whom substance abuse is rally a problem. You must keep in mind that (as I pointed out before) vast majorities of substance users (and abusers) limit themselves to recreational, relatively infrequent use and do not present with the problems the abusers do. However, they contribute to the problems associated with the criminal trafficking: the vast financial gains, the crime, the violence, the encouragement of addiction and so forth.
ReplyDeleteTo get the broader look you didn't get in your practice, for heavens sake read "Legalize it all" in the May Harper's. You'll be glad you did.
Teenage substance abuse after decriminalization in Portugal spiked, then subsided to a lower than usual rate and has stayed there. The theory is that they were curious, they satisfied their curiosity, they moved on. There could well be other reasons, such as since their present market was now assured, the peddlers no longer found it necessary to recruit more potential addicts. Read it.
Legalization, as we have done rather successfully with alcohol, is far better than decriminalization (Portugal still has drug trafficking problems) IF there is a government monopoly and full control over production (eliminate deaths through impurities and encouragement of addiction with additives), marketing (no advertising to lure new users), distribution (no profit either through the very attractive premium dealers include for the risks involved at present, and too low a price on the market to make a gray market profitable), pricing (it's easier to adjust government revenues by changing the price of the product it controls than by trying to change a tax on a product the private market peddles), and market expansion (since Vermont does not want to get filthy rich off creating massive addiction problems, it will not want to expand the business).
If you don't think a government monopoly on decriminalized substances is not a better answer, what do you propose? Clearly, what's in place is not working.
"Fact do not cease to exist simply because they are ignored."
3:16, you base your Colorado teen substance abuse increase on this article?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.scientificamerican.com/article/colorado-s-teen-marijuana-usage-dips-after-legalization/