PARIS — On the second full day of the Kristina Lowe double-manslaughter trial, two police officers, a nurse and an emergency medical technician each testified that Lowe denied driving the car that crashed on Jan. 7, 2012, killing 16-year-old Rebecca Mason and 19-year-old Logan Dam.
Tri-Town Rescue EMT Kevin Davis said that Lowe told him she was the belted front-seat passenger when the car crashed, and that she’d had too much to drink which is why she wasn’t driving.
Assistant District Attorney Richard Beauchesne asked Davis whether Lowe’s injuries were consistent with being the belted passenger, and Davis said he didn’t know because Lowe wouldn’t let him cut her shirt open to examine her.
According to Davis, “She told me she didn’t want her shirt cut. She just bought it the day before.”
Lowe is on trial in Oxford County Superior Court, facing two felony charges of vehicle manslaughter, two charges of aggravated criminal operating under the influence and one charge of leaving the scene of a fatal accident in West Paris.
At 12:46 a.m. on Jan. 7, 2012, Davis said Tri-Town was called to the scene of a rollover accident in which four people were believed to have been injured. When he arrived, he testified, the front seats were empty.
When he looked in the back, he said a woman was the only one visible and “she was deceased.” Looking more closely, he saw Dam underneath Mason, and that Dam “was clearly deceased.”
His frank responses to Beauchesne’s questions were followed by sounds of the victims’ family members and friends crying.
After he determined the teens were dead, David testified that he then got a call to respond to 12 Yeaton Lane to treat another victim of this crash, and he left the accident scene to respond to what turned out to be a drinking party for teens and young adults.
As Tri-Town transported Lowe to Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway, Davis said he asked her several times if she was driving. “She admitted to me she was too drunk to drive, which is why she wasn’t driving,” he said.
Earlier in the day Friday, Erin Miragliuolo, a DNA forensic analyst with the Maine State Police Crime Lab, testified that of the seven blood samples she tested from the car, the blood taken from the exterior rear passenger door was Mason’s and the rest belonged to Jacob Skaff, who police believe was Lowe’s front seat passenger.
Most of Skaff’s blood, with the exception of a sample taken on the steering wheel column, was found in the front seat passenger compartment.
Lowe cried during much of Friday morning’s testimony, particularly when Beauchesne played an audio recording of her interview with State Police Trooper Lauren Edstrom while being treated in the critical care unit of Maine Medical Center in Portland.
On that tape, Lowe repeatedly told Edstrom that she had not been driving the car when it crashed. She also said she didn’t remember what happened, and then also suggested that maybe she had been driving because she remembered buying gas as she, Skaff, Mason and Dam were returning to the party.
According to Lowe’s recorded statement, Dam wanted to leave the party to go for cigarettes. There were only two cars at the party, so there was a lot of discussion about who would drive, what car would go and who wanted to travel along.
In her taped explanation, Lowe told Edstrom that a car belonging to Dakota Larson of South Paris was at the house, but the 19-year-old couldn’t drive it because he’d had a recent operating under the influence stop. So, Jacob Skaff offered to drive and “we hopped in the car,” Lowe said. She hadn’t wanted to drive because she’d had five shots of Jager, Lowe told Edstrom.
Edstrom testified that the interview was considered an “informational” interview only, and she did not read Lowe her Miranda rights. Defense attorney James Howaniec asked the trooper, who is now a detective with Major Crimes, whether she was aware Lowe had not slept or eaten since the wreck, and that she had been administered morphine and fentanyl to ease the pain of her injuries, indicating that the lack of sleep and food, coupled with the influence of the narcotics, had probably clouded Lowe’s ability to respond.
Edstrom testified she was not aware of any of Lowe’s medical treatment, and that she didn’t consider Lowe to be in custody, triggering the Miranda requirement.
“Are you aware the court has disagreed with you on that point?” Howaniec asked her. “Yes,” Edstrom said, responding to Howaniec’s passing reference to a decision by the Maine Supreme Judicial Court that some of what Lowe told Edstrom, including a statement that she had been texting and driving at the time of the crash, would not be admissible in court because there was no Miranda warning.
According to Lowe’s taped account, the four left the party and, on the way back, stopped for cigarettes at a local gas station where Lowe remembers getting gas.
Then, “I don’t know. Something happened. I don’t know what happened,” she said, starting to cry on the tape. Sitting at the defense table, Lowe was crying and being comforted by defense co-counsel Chelsea Peters.
On the tape, Lowe could be heard telling Edstrom she thought she was going to be sick, and Edstrom stepped back to allow a nurse to tend to Lowe.
Then, after checking to be sure Lowe was willing to continue talking, Edstrom told her that if she was driving this would be the best time to tell police.
Talking very fast on the tape, Lowe said that after the stop “everything was good. Everything was fine. And then the next thing I know Logan was reaching in the front and we were rolling.”
After the accident, she said, “I was stuck in the car. I looked back. It was completely crushed in,” telling Edstrom she couldn’t see Mason and Dam. “I couldn’t see them, I couldn’t see them,” she cried.
She said she couldn’t get out of the passenger side, and remembers pushing Skaff out of the driver’s side before following him out of the car.
“We both lost our cell phones. We sat there for about 10 minutes. There was no traffic. We decided to go back” to the party, she said.
Edstrom asked her whether they walked about together, and she said they both walked back, but Skaff would not walk next to her.
When they got back to the party, “everyone was panicking when they saw us,” she said, and when they told the other party-goers that Dam didn’t get out of the car “they all started freaking out and I went into the bathroom.” Later, she went to lay down in a back bedroom, which is where police found her.
At one point Lowe asked Edstrom whether her purse, her wallet and her license had been found in the car, and Edstrom told her not to worry about that.
Asked again whether she had been driving, Lowe told Edstrom she was not. “So you’re telling me Jake was driving?” Edstrom asked. “Yes,” Lowe said.
“Are you telling me the truth about who was driving?”, Edstrom asked. “Yes,” Lowe answered.
Then, when Edstrom told Lowe “if you were driving this is the time to tell me,” Lowe said. “I just don’t know,” and maybe Skaff and she had switched driving when they stopped for gas.
“The car was totaled and and I’m very worried for Becca and Logan. How they are,” Lowe told Estrom.
On the tape Lowe said she clearly remembers Skaff driving to the store, and I’m “80 percent sure he was driving on the way back.”
At this point, the prosecutor turned off the audio recording, but defense attorney James Howaniec asked the jury to listen to more of it during his cross-examination of Edstrom. When the tape began, Edstrom could be heard asking Lowe once again if she had been driving, and she said, “there’s a decent chance I drove back after I got gas.”
At that point, Edstrom told Lowe “I have some bad news for you. Logan and Becca died in the accident.”
There was just a brief moment of silence because the sound of Lowe crying, almost keening, could be heard on the tape.
Howaniec asked Edstrom whether she was concerned that she was questioning an 18-year-old who was on painkillers and hadn’t eaten or slept all night. Edstrom said he had no information about Lowe’s medications or how much sleep she had, but was there only one way to get information from her about what she remembered about the crash.
See Saturday’s Sun Journal for more information on the trial.
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