Lowell man charged with OUI in fatal river crash
Authorities have recovered what they believe to be the body of a 16-year-old Lowell girl who was thrown into the Merrimack River Sunday night when the personal watercraft she was riding was hit from behind by another one operated by an alleged drunken driver.
Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan declined to identify the victim, pending positive identification by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.
But the injured driver of the second vehicle, Douglas Dematos, was arraigned yesterday afternoon in his room at Lowell General Hospital on charges of operating a watercraft under the influence of an intoxicating liquor, negligent operation of a motor boat, operating a watercraft at night, operating an unregistered motorboat, operating at night without navigation lights and operating too close to another vessel.
“We’ll be relooking at those charges obviously in light of what’s taken place here this morning,” Ryan said yesterday at a press conference by the Chelmsford boat launch shortly after the body was found.
Assistant District Attorney Ashlee Mastrangelo recommended $15,000 bail, but Judge Stacey Fortes set it at $7,500 — an amount Dematos’ attorney, Frances Dallmeyer, said her client, an unemployed carpenter, would not be able to make.
“He’s every remorseful,” Dallmeyer said. “He doesn’t remember a lot of what happened.”
Fortes also ordered the defendant to stay away from alcohol and to submit to random screens.
Chelmsford police responding to a 10:34 p.m. report Sunday of a disturbance at the boat ramp learned the crash had taken place about a half-hour earlier, more than two hours after sunset, the cutoff for operating a water scooter.
Officers found Dematos, 32, of Lowell and the 19-year-old operator of the vehicle the girl had been riding, according to a police report. Both men showed signs of being impaired and are believed to know each other, authorities said.
Officers who tried to interview Dematos to narrow the search area for the victim said he was extremely unsteady on his feet, his speech was slurred, and his eyes were glassy and bloodshot — observations his lawyer later suggested could have been due to a head injury. But Mastrangelo noted that he also reeked of alcohol, according to police.
Dematos has five prior cases in Lowell District Court — four for driving with a suspended license and one for driving an unregistered motor vehicle.
State, local and environmental police and fire departments searched for the girl until early yesterday morning and resumed the search at about 5:30 a.m. The body was discovered at 10 a.m.