What paramedics heard her say around O’Keefe’s body

On May 2, 2024By Vaseline

Dedham, MA – Karen Read sits with her attorney David Yannetti during her murder trial. Read is accused of crashing her SUV into her boyfriend John O’Keefe, a Boston police officer, and leaving him stranded in a snowstorm. (Nancy Lane/Boston Herald)

More Canton Fire Department paramedics who tended to John O’Keefe as he lay dead or dying on a front lawn testified that his alleged killer Karen Read said, “I hit him” as he paced the scene and was hysterical — but two others had less incriminating memories of her screaming.

“The only response I personally got was, ‘I hit him, I hit him; Oh my God, I hit him,” Canton Fire Department paramedic Anthony Flematti recalled Read telling him as he asked her for basic information.

Canton Fire Department Acting Lt. Flematti, the lead paramedic on the scene, continued his testimony from Tuesday — the case was not heard Wednesday — into the third day of the Read murder trial. He was accompanied by three more paramedics who were called to 34 Fairview Road in Canton just after 6 a.m. on January 29, 2022.

Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision that caused the deaths of O’Keefe, a 16-year-old Boston police officer and her then-boyfriend of about two years .

Prosecutors allege Read hit O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV by throwing the car into reverse and hitting him at a speed of 24 mph (39.2 km/h) and leaving him in the cold in the front yard of the house in Canton. The defense says local and state police and prosecutors carried out a massive fabrication. They say his injuries are not consistent with being hit by a car and that he was struck inside the house and then found lying on the lawn.

Her trial began Monday in Norfolk Superior Court in Dedham.

Flematti’s recollection of Read’s words matched those of Timothy Nuttall, another Canton Fire paramedic who testified Tuesday. Canton Police Officer Steven Saraf, the first authority on the scene, also testified Monday that Read made the incriminating and repeated statement: “This is all my fault” and “I did this.”

The poor statements continued with the testimony of Canton Fire paramedic Katie McLaughlin, who Flematti said relayed Read’s interrogation when he had to jump into the ambulance and tend to O’Keefe, whose internal body temperature was just 80 degrees.

“I asked her if there had been any significant trauma before that,” McLaughlin testified of her questioning of Read. “She said, ‘I hit him.’ … She seemed very upset, hysterical I would say.”

But two other paramedics testified that Read was distraught and merely expressed sadness that O’Keefe was dead or asked them if he was dead.

Canton Fire Lt. Francis Walsh said he saw two women at the scene when he stopped and that one of them, whom he identified as Read, was “screaming and crying” and repeatedly asked, “Is he still alive?”

Similarly, paramedic Matthew Kelly testified that he heard Read scream, “He’s dead.” He’s (expletive) dead!”

Kelly was the least experienced paramedic on scene and had received his training within two months of that call. Attorney David Yannetti suggested that because Kelly was so new, he was consciously trying to do everything by the book, which Kelly confirmed.

“And you have been extremely consistent in your recollection of what she said at the scene?” Yannetti asked him, which Kelly confirmed.

Yannetti played police dashcam video of the scene in which Kelly, after a replay, confirmed he heard someone in the background yelling “(expletive) dead” under Officer Saraf asking if the man on the ground, O’Keefe, had any medication drank. response.

Prosecutor Adam Lally determined the footage could have been from before paramedics arrived as no ambulance was visible in the video, which Kelly said was possible. Lally also suggested that the paramedics were all walking around doing different things in the chaos of an emergency and so had heard different things at different points, which Kelly agreed could be the case.

Defense attorneys Yannetti and Alan Jackson have cleared up inconsistencies in the first responders’ accounts, as well as with previous witnesses who testified about incriminating statements Read allegedly made at the scene.

Jackson questioned why Flematti never wrote in his report that Read said she had hit O’Keefe and, as his testimony, told doctors and nurses at Good Samaritan Hospital in Brockton that O’Keefe might have been hit by a car was hit by a car was true, why no one at that hospital included it in their own reports.

The day ended with testimony from McLaughlin, who had not yet been interviewed by the defense. Jurors will visit the site of O’Keefe’s death on Friday.