Man charged after car strikes three in Salem
A mother and her twin daughters were looking for a beloved stuffed animal lost at Salem’s Halloween festivities Sunday night when they were struck by an alleged drunk driver — a schoolteacher who tried to ditch the beer cans in his car, authorities said.
Police found the 10-yearold North Attleboro sisters lying 25 feet apart at the intersection of Bridge and Washington streets outside the MBTA commuter rail station and their mother, Gabrielle Mason, 36, pacing back and forth between them “with blood on her head and face,” Assistant Essex District Attorney Megan MacKenzie said.
Dexter Mitchell, 52, of Beverly, pleaded not guilty yesterday to drunken driving, leaving the scene of an accident and failure to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk.
One of the girls suffered head and back injuries and a possible broken femur, police said. The family was leaving the downtown area, but returned to search for the lost toy, they said. All three remained hospitalized yesterday in Boston.
“They were crossing from the train station. They were struck squarely by a motor vehicle,” Salem Police Capt. Conrad Prosniewski told the Herald. “They were all pretty badly banged up.”
Salem District Court Judge Matthew J. Machera ordered Mitchell held on $2,500 cash bail — far short of the $10,000 MacKenzie requested.
Mitchell, a paraprofessional who works with 7thand 8th-grade special needs students, told police he had watched Sunday’s Green Bay Packers game with a friend and had one beer.
MacKenzie said after initially fleeing the 8 p.m. crash in a Subaru wagon, Mitchell returned minutes later and told an officer “he was the one who was driving the motor vehicle; however, while speaking with witnesses, officers learned that prior to approaching the police officer he did pull up to a dumpster and take out of his car what was later identified to be “several beer cans both empty and full thrown in the dumpster.” Mitchell failed three field sobriety tests, the prosecutor said.
Mitchell has a 13-year-old child of his own, defense attorney Scott Masse said.
The Registry of Motor Vehicles suspended Mitchell’s license for 180 days for refusing a Breathalyzer test. His driving history dates to 1983 and includes failing to yield to a pedestrian in Salem in 1995, as well as a 2001 accident in Salem for which he was found mostly at fault. But Masse said, “He has no prior (criminal) record, no prior convictions. There’s no real evidence that he was driving negligently. Unfortunately it was an accident that happened.”