The Register Citizen (Torrington, CT)
Report: CT motorcyclist with history of reckless driving speeding before crash that killed girl
GLASTONBURY — Amber Sehrt was driving toward Hebron Avenue one September Sunday when she saw a motorcycle speed down the street and through a roundabout. She told her 14-yearold daughter, “Oh my God, he is going to hurt somebody.”
Moments later, the motorcyclist slammed into the passenger side of an SUV that was starting to turn left from Hebron Avenue onto a highway ramp, according to the police report obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media Group. The crash killed the motorcyclist and Andra Spencer, 15, of Colchester, who was a passenger in the SUV.
Gordon “Mac” Southby, 18, of Glastonbury, who police say had a history of recklessly riding motorcycles and dirt bikes around town, was traveling close to 100 mph seconds before the impact, investigators said in the report. Police also said he had alcohol and THC in his system.
If Southby survived, he would have been charged with negligent homicide with a motor vehicle, driving while under the influence, reckless driving, possession of alcohol by a minor and failure to display a marker, the report said.
John O'Brien, the lawyer for Southby's mother, H. Veronica Southby, said the family disagrees with parts of the accident report and plans to hire its own experts to reconstruct the crash and review toxicology reports.
“We need to retain an accident reconstruction expert as well as a toxicologist regarding the claim that Mac was intoxicated, or that his consumption of alcohol in any way contributed to this collision,” O'Brien said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media.
According to the accident report, police were flooded with 911 calls about the crash around 6:50 p.m. Sept. 25. The first responders encountered a horrible scene: A 2016 GMC Acadia with a hole in its side was partially up a ramp to Route 2 East. A wrecked motorcycle, a 2013 Yamaha YZF-R6, was in a grassy area on the side of the road.
The motorcyclist had hit the passenger side of the SUV with such force, he penetrated it and ended up in the vehicle's third row, with the passenger-side door frame “bent around his body,” Officer Patrick W. Hemingway wrote in a supplementary report.
The rider had extreme trauma to his legs, hips, chest and head, and Hemingway couldn't find a pulse. Police and firefighters pulled him out of the vehicle and performed CPR. He was taken to Hartford Hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Officers recognized him as Southby, who they had charged with reckless driving in the past.
The teenager in the second row of the SUV suffered severe trauma to the right side of her head, according to the report.
Officer Neal P. Cavanaugh detected a faint pulse on the girl, he wrote in his report. With help from firefighters and medics, he pulled her from the Acadia. They started CPR and she was taken to Connecticut Children's, where she was placed on life support. She later was removed from life support and died.
The woman in the driver's seat was dazed, but didn't appear to have serious physical injuries, and the front-seat passenger complained of head pain, police said in the report. Both were taken to Hartford Hospital.
Investigators said several people saw the motorcycle speeding up and down Hebron Avenue before the deadly crash, the report stated.
According to the report, a resident looked out his window and saw a motorcycle traveling “at least 50 mph” on Hebron Avenue about 6:40 p.m. The westbound motorcycle then shifted through “three or four” gears to reach what the man — who also rides motorcycles — estimated to be 90 to 100 mph, the report stated.
A short time later, a couple pulled out of a Hebron Avenue restaurant and saw a blue motorcycle “zigzagging” back and forth behind them and tailgating, according to the report.
The woman told police the rider was “very impatient while he was driving behind us,” the report said.
The motorcycle was now eastbound, and the rider “flew by our vehicle on the driver's side,” she said, passing them in a lane for oncoming traffic, the report said.
‘Looked like a missile hit it’
Sehrt said she also saw the motorcycle speed by when she was driving her teenager to a sporting event. She was heading south on House Street, toward the intersection with Hebron Avenue, which has been converted into a roundabout. Roundabouts are proven to be safer because they force cars to slow down and drive around the circle to get to their destination, but Southby managed to speed around the circle in as straight a line as possible and continue east on Hebron, the report stated.
“The motorcycle literally blew through,” Sehrt said, according to the report.
She, too, was headed east on Hebron Avenue, and once she drove over a crest in the road, she came upon the scene seconds after the crash.
“I could still see smoke billowing out of her car,” she said in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media. “The car looked like a missile hit it.”
She had her daughter call 911 and rushed to the driver, who cried out, “'My baby, my baby!' ” Sehrt said. Sehrt, who photographs newborns, expected to find an infant, but instead found Spencer in the SUV's second row.
“Her head was really hanging at a very uncomfortable position, so I climbed in the car,” Sehrt said. “I lifted her head slightly.”
While helping the unconscious girl, Sehrt tried to comfort her concerned family members in the front seats. She told the mother and passenger, who she said seemed to be in his teens, that Spencer was sleeping. She said she never noticed Southby, who was inches from her
in the third row.
Police: Motorcyclist was going 99.3 mph
In addition to the eyewitness accounts that the motorcycle had been speeding before the crash, police had video.
They obtained surveillance footage showing the bike passing a restaurant and another building minutes before the crash and did a frame-by-frame analysis to calculate its approximate speed. They determined it was traveling between 66 and 70 mph when it was in the 100block of Hebron Avenue, where the speed limit is 30 mph, the report said.
The second video showed the motorcycle was traveling between 76 and 82 mph when it reached the intersections of Linden and Sycamore streets to the east, according to the report.
Because witnesses said the motorcycle sped up, and a video shows it “accelerating aggressively,” investigators used test drive data to determine the acceleration rate for the motorcycle, which is capable of going from 0 to 100 mph in six seconds, the report stated. Police concluded that as the motorcycle passed Sycamore Street, the closest side street to the crash scene, it was going 99.3 mph, covering 145 feet per second, according to the report.
Police also determined that if the motorcycle maintained a speed of less than 76 mph, the SUV would have cleared the intersection and the crash would not have happened, the report said.
“It is safe to conclude that the GMC Acadia's operator did not and could not see the motorcycle when she began her turn,” the report said.
The report also stated that when Southby saw the SUV, he tried to stop: The Yamaha left a 23-foot skid mark. But his speed dropped by only about 16 mph.
Investigators also said the fact he was impaired could have affected his judgment, the report said. Southby had alcohol and THC — the marijuana ingredient that makes one high — in his system, the report said. He also had beer in his backpack, along with a motorcycle license plate, the report stated.
The toxicology information is redacted from the original report. However, a revised report released by Lt. Kevin Szydlo, public information officer for the Glastonbury Police Department, stated Southby's blood-alcohol content was four times the legal limit of 0.02 for someone under 21.
Szydlo said he could not release Southby's exact BAC because police are not allowed to provide information they receive from a state agency like the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. A five-page supplementary mapping report conducted by the Connecticut State Police also was redacted.
Dr. James R. Gill, the state's chief medical examiner, said Friday his office only releases information that appears on death certificates, which doesn't include toxicology results.
‘Joyful and loving person’
Spencer was a junior at Bacon Academy in Colchester. Described as “joyful and loving,” the teen cherished her three dogs and loved pandas, according to her obituary.
She was a budding photographer whose work already was gaining recognition. Two of her photographs placed in the 2020 Boston Flower Show Youth Division, her family said in the obit.
“She especially enjoyed taking pictures of sunsets and would often ask to pull over so she could get a better angle,” the obituary said.
She also used her photography skills in a more lighthearted way.
“She enjoyed taking silly selfies, and especially pictures of her friends, and family while making silly gestures. She could strike up a conversation with anyone and made friends where ever she went,” the obituary said.
Spencer's friend, Taylor Gerst, described her as funny and caring in an interview with Hearst Connecticut Media days after the crash.
“She always could tell if someone was upset,” Gerst said. And she acted on those observations, once getting off a group video chat to ask Gerst what was troubling her.
Southby, who had attended Glastonbury High School, was charismatic and smart, his principal said. According to his obituary, he was an Eagle Scout who had played hockey and knew how to play five instruments. He also was a gifted mechanic who built motorcycles.
However, the motorcycles are what repeatedly got him into trouble with Glastonbury police, records show.
In two separate arrests in 2022, police charged Southby with reckless driving and nine other traffic violations, including speeding, passing in a no-passing zone and failure to display plates, according to a warrant for his arrest.
In one of the incidents, Officer Bryant Cleveland saw him on a 2002 Kawasaki motorcycle passing cars in the breakdown lane, the warrant stated. Southby sped away from the officer, who stopped following him because of the danger, the warrant said.
Southby tried to elude police on at least two previous occasions and once drove at officers in the high school parking lot, according to the warrant.
In the warrant, Cleveland seemed prescient when he sounded an alarm about what he said was Southby's recklessness.
“The behavior,” the officer wrote in the warrant, “has continued, progressed and is becoming more dangerous.”