Driver cleared in deaths of 4 men
Police chief calls grand jury’s decision ‘miscarriage of justice’
An Ulster County grand jury has cleared the driver in the August 2015 one-car crash in Saugerties that left four young men dead, the county District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
District Attorney Holley Carnright said in a statement emailed to the media that the grand jury — which looked specifically at whether Meredith McSpirit, 20, “was impaired at the time of the operation of the vehicle” — found no evidence that she committed a crime.
Saugerties Police Chief Joseph Sinagra called the grand jury’s decision a “severe
miscarriage of justice” and “nonsensical.” He said McSpirit at least should have faced traffic-related charges.
McSpirit, of Kingston, was behind the wheel of a 2002 four-door Honda about 11:35 a.m. last Aug. 26 when the car went down a 110-foot embankment in the village of Saugerties and landed on its roof. McSpirit missed the sharp right-hand curve at the end of Washington Avenue, onto Montgomery Street, and instead went down a driveway and down the embankment. The car hit a house on Dock Street before landing upside-down.
The four passengers in the car — Adam Jeffrey McQueen, 22, of Ulster Park, and Kingston residents Dante Crump, 22, Kaireem Meeks Jr., 24, and Jonte
Clark, 26 — all died. McSpirit suffered serious spinal injuries. The five were coming from HITS on the Hudson in Saugerties, where they all worked.
McSpirit told the Freeman last week that she has no recollection of the accident and the moments leading up to it, and she denied the allegation in a lawsuit against her that she was “impaired by alcohol, narcotic drug and/or controlled substance” at the time.
McSpirit provided the Freeman with the results of blood tests taken shortly after the accident that showed no alcohol in her system, and Carnright, in his emailed statement, said the grand jury “found that no ... evidence of impairment exists.”
Sinagra said Wednesday that he doesn’t “buy the fact that an individual does not remember what happened” and noted McSpirit has said she remembers things that
happened before and after the crash.
Carnright said the grand jury, “after hearing evidence for several days from numerous witnesses, determined not to file criminal charges relating to this incident.”
The district attorney did not say what might have led to the accident, but he implied that excessive speed was not to blame.
“Our investigation included an accident reconstruction, analysis of the speed of operation of the vehicle and an examination of the vehicle itself for mechanical defects,” he said, without revealing the results of those efforts.
McSpirit said last week that the car was having brake problems, which she became aware of the day before the crash. She said McQueen borrowed $150 from a supervisor at HITS and was planning to fix the problem.
She said, though, that “nothing [about the brakes] felt awkward or not normal.”
Sinagra said experts reviewed the brakes in the car and found there were no problems. He also said investigators determined there was no attempt by the driver to stop the car prior to the crash.
Prior to Wednesday, Sinagra routinely declined to answer the Freeman’s questions about the crash investigation.
Carnright said the investi
gation also included “interviews of individuals who had contact with or worked with McSpirit that morning, video of the operation of the vehicle prior to the crash, statements made by Ms. McSpirit to both medical personnel and law enforcement and laboratory analysis of her blood.”
He did not identify the source of the video evidence.
Carnright said his office
told the survivors of the four people who were killed about the grand jury’s decision.
“It is troubling, at best, not to be able to give them a concrete explanation as to how this terrible, terrible tragedy occurred,” the prosecutor said.
“I can’t imagine what they’re going through,” Sinagra said of the victims’ families.
McSpirit said last week that she does not believe she suffered any kind of medical condition that caused her not to negotiate the sharp curve. She also said she was cooperating fully with authorities.
Sinagra said Wednesday that McSpirit was cooperative in coming to the police station for interviews but not fully cooperative with the investigation.
The lawsuit against McSpirit was filed Jan. 28 by Crump’s mother, Christine
Snyder. Besides McSpirit, the suit names Adam Jeffrey McQueen Sr., the father of victim Adam Jeffrey McQueen; and Mary P. Fisher, who is identified as the owner of the car.
Other than alleging McSpirit was impaired, the suit contends the younger McQueen was “negligent, careless and or reckless in allowing, causing and or contributing” to McSpirit driving the car “when he knew or should of known” of her intoxication.
The suit does not indicate the basis for alleging McSpirit was impaired prior to the crash.
McSpirit said last week that she has been subject to multiple daily incidents of harassment and threats on Facebook and in person since the crash.