AUBURN — Harvest Hill Farm owner Peter Bolduc Jr. was aware the brakes on a Jeep being driven on The Gauntlet trail at his Mechanic Falls farm last fall were bad, but he ignored employee warnings to have the vehicle repaired, according to investigators’ affidavits.
And, one of the farm’s most loyal employees told investigators, Bolduc had been at the wheel of the Jeep when the brakes failed three weeks before the fatal accident, but he “continued to use the Jeep and never had the brakes repaired.”
Androscoggin County prosecutors did not seek an indictment against Bolduc when meeting with an Androscoggin County grand jury over the course of three months, ending earlier this month in felony charges against Bolduc’s company, including manslaughter. The Jeep’s driver and a mechanic were charged with misdemeanors.
Four affidavits released Thursday contain witness statements that describe a chaotic scene as that Jeep and a trailer careened out of control on Oct. 11, 2014, killing 17-year-old Cassidy Charette of Oakland.
According to the affidavits, employees of the farm warned Bolduc multiple times that the Jeep that was used to haul the hayride trailer was not running well and suggested he “junk it,” but Bolduc told them to “get it ready” for the Gauntlet trail ride.
The affidavits in support of search warrants for vehicle maintenance and records at Harvest Hill Farm had been ordered impounded until trial but were released at the request of the Sun Journal.
After seeing the Sun Journal’s report published online Thursday afternoon, Bolduc called the newspaper and said employees who claim that he knew about the Jeep’s poor brakes are lying. Bolduc said he passed two polygraph tests and is adamant that he did not know anything about the Jeep’s condition.
According to an affidavit of Maine Fire Marshal’s Office senior investigator Daniel Young, the brakes on a Jeep hauling a 20-foot-long farm trailer appeared to have failed, or had other mechanical problems, that caused “the Jeep and trailer to travel down a 300-foot gravel road with a continuous downward pitch.”
The vehicles passed a haunted hayride scene station without stopping, continued on down the hill “where the trailer hit a large hardwood tree, uprooting the tree and causing the trailer to pitch to the right and then violently to the left,” throwing all 22 patrons and Jeep driver David Brown from the vehicles.
Brown has been charged with reckless conduct and, if convicted, faces up to 364 days in jail.
Farm employees Casey West and Lisa Philbrick, who witnessed the accident, told investigators they heard David Brown say, “Oh s**t, I can’t stop,” as he drove by them, according to the affidavit.
Passenger Heather Turcotte, who was on the trailer but not injured, told investigators that after the crash when she went to check on Brown’s condition, Brown told her, “I lost my brakes, I couldn’t stop.”
According to the same affidavit, Brown told fire investigator Christopher Sanford that he was “riding the brakes when he got to the Iron Works display and the brakes went to the floor.” Brown also told Sanford that he tried to put the Jeep in “park” to make the corner of the hill before losing control of the vehicle.
Another farm employee, Kayla Lord, told investigators that she had been stationed on the trailer narrating the ride. “She knew something was wrong when, at the sixth scene, the Jeep and trailer were going much faster than the normal speed of 4 miles per hour.”
In his June 17 affidavit, Young wrote that an autopsy of the Jeep CJ5 used to pull the flatbed trailer revealed “that a brake line had been recently installed on the driver’s side rear brake system and that the reservoir that holds the brake fluid for the rear brakes was empty.”
The Jeep’s inspector also “determined that the last time the actual brake shoes were installed, that certain parts of the system were left off and not properly installed.”
The Jeep’s inspector, David York, of Maine State Police, testified before an Androscoggin County grand jury that the brakes “were not adequate for the weight towed and the mechanical condition of the overall vehicle, including brakes, was poor.”
Young wrote in his affidavit that he spoke with Theberge, a mechanic who was employed at the farm at the time of the crash. Thebege, who is charged with reckless conduct in the fatal accident, said he didn’t replace the Jeep’s brake line.
Martin Menario, a farm mechanic who left before the crash, told Young that the Jeep was not in running order in the late fall of 2013. He said he worked on the Jeep and started a file on it. He said the Jeep had been used in The Gauntlet in the winter of 2013-14. He said he remembered that “the ‘brake pedal’ would go right to the floor with brake fluid coming out and gasoline ‘leaking on the exhaust.'”
Jeffrey Strout, a farm employee who manages The Gauntlet ride, told investigators that he had warned Bolduc that “the grade is too much for inferior vehicles and the weight pushes them.”
Theberge told investigators that, during his four years of working at the farm, he “has never known of any preventative maintenance on any of the vehicles that Peter Bolduc uses in the Gauntlet.” And, specifically, he said, he had never known of any brake work done on the Jeep.
Theberge also told investigators that the first vehicle Bolduc used in the Gauntlet ride was a “Subaru style vehicle” that “would not pass state inspection and had to be taken off the road.”
On the morning of the accident, Theberge told investigators that he was asked to come to the farm to work on an ignition issue with the Subaru and to check the Jeep, which was “ running rough.”
He checked oil, antifreeze and brake fluid on the Jeep, and while the oil was down two quarts, the brake fluid and antifreeze were fine, he said.
According to a woman employed by Bolduc who is identified as “Carrie” in Young’s affidavit, she had ridden The Gauntlet ride earlier in the evening with Brown at the wheel of the Jeep, and Brown told her the brakes “seemed funny.”
Theberge told investigators that Carrie told him after her ride that Brown told her that “the brakes felt iffy or messed up,” but the Jeep was sent out on the trail again anyway.
According to Young, Christopher Kimball, who is also employed at the farm, told investigators he was very upset by the accident because he and other employees told Bolduc that the Jeep and other vehicles he was using on the hayride were inadequate.
“Kimball told me that, just three weeks ago, Peter Bolduc complained to him that when the Jeep warmed up the brakes went right to the floor. Kimball told me that Peter Bolduc continued to use the Jeep and never had the brakes repaired,” according to Young’s affidavit.
In addition to the Jeep, Bolduc was running six other rides with SUVs and tractors along the trail, running about 20 minutes apart on the night of the accident.
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