A federal employee who drove into two buildings in Waitsfield early Sunday morning was charged with drunken driving and negligent operation of a vehicle, according to Vermont State Police.
Eric McCarthy, 45, of Essex, was driving a 2016 3-series BMW that went off the road, hit the deck of a building and crossed through a yard before crashing into the side of yet another building, according to first responders.
“This person threaded the needle,” said David Darr, who owns one of the buildings. His son lives in an apartment on the top floor and heard the crash in the middle of the night, he said.
He said the crash took out a “substantial” Darrad Services business sign on a post, in addition to a 6-by-6 column that holds up the porch. The front stairs were “ripped to shreds,” he said.
The car then sped over the side of the building, missing a large elm tree, before launching into a second building, where the car remained, hanging off the first floor, Darr said.
A Vermont State Police report said troopers found McCarthy with “signs of impairment.” He was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol and negligent driving, and later released with a notice to appear in Washington County Superior Court on Jan. 15, according to the police report.
A spokesperson from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service, a division of the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed the person involved in the crash is a department employee but declined to comment further.
“DHS holds its employees to the highest standards of integrity and professionalism,” spokesperson Matthew J. Tragesser said in an emailed statement Tuesday. “USCIS is aware of an employee who was involved in a crash near Waitsfield. We are unable to comment further as the investigation is ongoing.”
According to McCarthy’s online profile, he works as an operations support specialist at USCIS and a management and program analyst at DHS. He did not respond to emails and phone calls requesting comment.
Emergency teams responded to the car crash on Main Street in the small Washington County town at about 12:42 a.m. on Nov. 23 and found a car embedded in the side of a red wooden building that houses three local businesses.
A passenger, identified as Katylyn Ruhl, 47, of Colchester was taken to Central Vermont Medical Center in Berlin with serious injuries, said Sgt. Tylor Rancourt from the state police Berlin barracks. She has since been discharged.
Emergency personnel responding to the scene said they found two buildings damaged.
Jared Young, chief of the Waitsfield-Fayston Fire Department, said the car first struck a building at 4457 Main Street and then crashed into the first floor of a second building at 4429 Main Street. His department assisted the Mad River Valley Ambulance Service in securing the crashed vehicle and extricating the passenger.
When the fire department left the scene around 2 a.m., the vehicle was still embedded in the building, Young said. State Police coordinated with a wrecker service to extract the vehicle from the structure later, he said.
The ambulance crew found the passenger in the car and the driver standing by the car in the building, which was stuck on the first floor, hanging over the lower level of the building, said Kevin Van Schaick, department head for rescue at the ambulance service, in an email.
“We had to gain access to the room below to support and stabilize the vehicle before it fell the rest of the way through the floor, as nearly all the joists were broken. The vehicle was kind of balanced on a stairwell wall. We installed some rescue struts to take the weight of the front of the car and forced the rear to rest on the foundation,” he added. The passenger was then safely removed from the car, he said.
Business owners said they were grateful there weren’t more injuries.
“Just the logic of that happening during the day or when there are people around, it would have been terrible,” said Darr, the owner of the first building that was struck, from where he runs Darrad Services, a 33-year-old computer service family business.
Jen Service, who rents a space in the second building for a massage service and a retail shop called Bridge &Main, said she learned about the car crashing into the building on Sunday morning when a friend texted her.
She and her husband headed over to check it out and initially thought somebody had just clipped the building. “But when we pulled around into the parking lot and saw the gaping hole in the side of the building, we were both just kind of struck,” she said.
While it’s not ideal to have to close for a few days right around the holidays, Service said she is glad the damage wasn’t worse. The retail shop and the massage room remain intact.
Kellee Mazer, who has owned the second building since 2022, has three tenants there. She said she is relieved no one was hurt and none of the merchandise was damaged despite the severity of the crash. She said she is waiting for insurance and engineering estimates and plans to “figure out what it takes” to fix the building.
