PARIS — A Greenwood man convicted Monday on a manslaughter charge stemming from a 2019 fatal crash in Stoneham that killed his wife will spend one year in prison.
Terrence Gordon submitted photo
In a plea agreement, Terrence Gordon, 33, entered a plea of no contest in Oxford County Superior Court.
He was sentenced to six years in prison, with all of that time suspended except for one year.
After his release from prison, he’ll be on probation for four years. If he were to violate any conditions of probation, he could be ordered to serve some or all of the suspended five years.
A manslaughter conviction is punishable by up to 30 years in prison.
Other charges against Gordon related to the crash were dismissed after his sentencing, including aggravated driving to endanger and two counts of endangering the welfare of a child.
He was indicted by an Oxford County grand jury in 2021; he denied the charges at his arraignment in 2022.
Gordon’s driver’s license was suspended for five years.
Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne told Judge Matthew Tice that Gordon had been driving a pickup truck on Oct. 4, 2019, with his wife in the passenger seat, their two children in the back seat.
The truck slammed into a tree along Main Street in Stoneham, killing 31-year-old Ashley Gordon.
Their two young daughters were injured, one seriously, Beauchesne said.
Gordon was not injured.
A witness told Oxford County Sheriff’s deputies that Gordon’s truck had come up quickly behind them, tailgating before passing them at high speed, before returning to the travel lane on a road where the speed limit was 35 mph.
A short time later, they came upon the truck crashed into a tree on a left-hand curve in the road, Beauchesne said.
Investigators studying the crash said analysis showed the truck’s speed likely was between one and nine mph faster than the “critical speed,” which means the speed above which the vehicle would not be able to handle the curve, Beauchesne said.
Gordon had told authorities a vehicle had struck the truck from behind, causing him to go off the road, Beauchesne said.
Investigators said an inspection of the back of the truck showed no damage that would confirm Gordon’s account of events.
Beauchesne said Gordon was criminally negligent in causing the crash by speeding.
Gordon’s attorney, Jeffrey Wilson, said a potential defense at trial would have been that another vehicle had contributed to the crash.
Gordon said, “I’m deeply sorry.”
He said his daughters are undergoing counseling and are being raised by their mother’s mother.
Gordon, who is a contractor, will start serving his sentence Aug. 1.
Wilson said he’s seen a “vast improvement in maturation” of his client over the past year as he, also, has been in counseling.
“He has a lot of time left to turn his life around,” Wilson said, adding Gordon wants to “make a better person of himself going forward.”
Judge Tice said that, on the surface, the sentence appears to be light.
“When I look at this, the numbers don’t necessarily make sense to me in some ways, but they do in many other ways,” he said.
“On balance though, I think it’s a good, carefully crafted sentence considering all the factors involved,” the judge said.
He said the structure of Gordon’s sentence leaves “a big chunk of time hanging over your head.”
Tice called the case “particularly complicated.”
He told Gordon he was “sorry for your loss and for your children’s loss and for the complicated relationship with your children.”
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