[B]URLINGTON — Up-close images of Steven Bourgoin’s smashed pickup as well as the charred remains of the car that burst into flames after prosecutors say he slammed into it driving the wrong way on Interstate 89, killing five teenagers, were shown to jurors on the third day of Bourgoin’s trial.
The 38-year-old former Williston man is facing five counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of the teens in the Oct. 8, 2016, crash.
Using a laser pointer from the witness stand, Sgt. Owen Ballinger an accident reconstruction team leader with the Vermont State Police, showed jurors photos projected on a white courtroom wall of the scene as well as diagrams and charts put together with information gathered as part of the investigation.
He spoke of his examination of the wreckage and reviews of the available computer and electronic systems in the vehicles involved in the crash.
The five teens were in 2004 Volkswagen Jetta traveling south on Interstate 89 in Williston late at night and Bourgoin was heading north, in the southbound lane of the interstate, behind the wheel of a 2012 Toyota Tacoma.
“Where did the area of the impact actually take place?” Chittenden County Deputy State’s Attorney Susan Hardin, a prosecutor, asked Ballinger.
“In the southbound travel lane, very near the center of the roadway,” Ballinger replied.
He described it as an “offset-head-on,” crash, meaning that it wasn’t entirely straight on.
“It caused the vehicles to rotate and then seperate,” the sergeant said, with the Jetta rolling over and eventually landing on its wheels in the median of the interstate.
“Did you find any evidence of skid marks on the interstate where the impact occurred,” Hardin asked.
“No,” Ballinger responded.
After that crash, prosecutors say Bourgoin stole the cruiser of a responding Williston police officer, fleeing the scene heading south down the interstate. Then, moments later, he did a U-turn, racing the vehicle back to the crash scene, again driving the wrong way on the highway.
Bourgoin drove into his already heavily damaged pickup that had been left on the interstate from the earlier crash, and careened into other vehicles pulled over on the side of the road.
The cruiser, with Bourgoin reaching a top speed of 107 mph, hit the pickup on its passenger side, Ballinger testified.
Hardin, the prosecutor, asked Ballinger if it appeared that Bourgoin had tried to stop before smashing the cruiser into the pickup.
“There was no braking,” Ballinger responded.
Bourgoin, sitting at the defense table with his attorneys, displayed little emotion upon seeing the images of the vehicles displayed on the courtroom wall.
Some of the family and friends of the teens killed in the crash held hands and comforted each other as the destroyed Jetta was shown in the courtroom. Others looked away.
Earlier Wednesday, Detective Sgt. Aimee Nolan of the Vermont State Police testified that she was part of the team that assisted in searching Bourgoin’s pickup after the crash, including helping obtain DNA samples from the vehicle.
Joseph Abraham, a chemist at the Vermont Forensic Laboratory, also testified, telling jurors he tested a swab from the pickup’s airbag that deployed from the steering wheel. He said he compared that to a known sample from Bourgoin and saw a DNA match.
Abraham described the probability of “randomly selecting” such a DNA profile at greater than one and one quadrillion. A quadrillion is 1,000 trillions.
“We actually round it off after if it gets to one and one quadrillion,” Abraham said. “Beyond that, it’s hard to conceptualize the number.”
The trial resumes Thursday with another member of the Vermont State Police expected to testify about the accident reconstruction portion of the investigation.
Prosecutors have said they hope Thursday to show the jury an “animation” of the crash, though Bourgoin’s attorney has stated his objection to it. Judge Kevin Griffin said in court Wednesday it is a matter he will take up after hearing that witness testify.
Williston Police Officer Eric Shepard, the first responding officer on the crash scene who rushed to aid the teens in the burning Jetta, is also expected to testify Thursday. It was Shepard’s cruiser that prosecutors say Bourgoin stole at the initial crash scene.
On the third day of the trial, much like the first two, Robert Katims, Bourgoin’s lawyer, did little cross-examination of the witnesses. Katims contended during his opening statement to the jury Monday that his client was insane.
It’s expected that during the defense portion of the trial set for next week that Katims will call an expert hired by the defense, as well as one hired by prosecution, who have both determined that Bourgoin was legally insane at the time of the crash.
Four of the five teens killed in the crash, Eli Brookens, 16, of Waterbury; Janie Chase Cozzi, 15, of Fayston; Liam Hale, 16, of Fayston; and Cyrus Zschau, 16, of Moretown, were all in the Jetta when the fire ignited after the vehicle was struck by Bourgoin’s pickup.
Mary Harris, 16, of Moretown, was ejected from the car before the blaze.
Harris was identified at the scene, while authorities had to use dental records to identify the other four teens, Dr. Elizabeth Bundock, the state’s deputy chief medical examiner, testified Wednesday.
Bundock added all the teens sustained fatal blunt force trauma injuries, and the manner of each deaths had been determined to be homicide.
The first witness testifying Wednesday was Laureen Wells of Calais, who told the jury she was a passenger in a vehicle driven by her husband, James Wells, and came upon the initial crash scene.
She said her husband, a senior deputy with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department who was off-duty at the time, got out of the vehicle and went to see what he could to help.
Laureen Wells said as she remained in the vehicle, a racing police cruiser driving the wrong way on the interstate crashed into other vehicles, sending debris onto the car she was in.
She said she then ran into the nearby woods and held onto a tree, and recalled thinking that nearly one year ago to the day her mother had died, and she couldn’t believe she would be dying on the same date.
“I remember, I kept saying, “I’m not ready to be with you yet,’” she recalled on the witness stand, referring to her late mother.
“I grabbed onto a tree and I held on,” Laureen added. “I really thought I was dead for a little bit.”
Her husband, James Wells, said he was helping a Williston police officer at the time of the cruiser crash.
“What did you do next?” Hardin, the prosecutor, asked him.
“Panic,” he replied.
Hardin asked what happened after that.
“I went back up to the interstate because I thought a dozen people were dead,” Jim Wells responded. “I heard chaos, I heard people screaming.”
Then he went looking for his wife, and found her behind a tree in the woods.
“She thought she was dead,” James Wells said of his wife. “I said, ‘You’re alive.’”
