Kevin O'Hara - Direct

MR. O'HARA: I do.

MR. O'HARA: Morning, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Kevin O'Hara, O-H-A-R-A.

MR. O'HARA: I'm a lieutenant with the Massachusetts State Police.

MR. O'HARA: Just over 22 years.

MR. O'HARA: Four and a half years.

MR. O'HARA: I'm the team commander for the State Police Special Emergency Response Team, which is also known as SERT, and the SERT team within the state.

MR. O'HARA: We have 61 team members, four of which are full-time, including myself. The other 57 have other primary duty assignments, and SERT is an additional duty for them.

MR. O'HARA: SERT is the primary search and rescue team for the State Police. We conduct lost missing person searches, evidence searches, we do security or crowd control at large-scale events such as the 4th of July, the Boston Marathon, Gillette Stadium, dignitary security.

MR. O'HARA: Since 2014.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, I was, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Yes. At 2:32 p.m., Lieutenant Tully gave me a phone call.

MR. O'HARA: Yes. I know he's the supervisor for the Norfolk County State Police detective unit.

MR. O'HARA: We'll receive a courtesy phone call, which is what I received from Lieutenant Tully, seeing if we were available, if this was — if we had members that could respond today for an incident he had ongoing. I told him we would be available. He then has to submit a request through his chain of command, which is the Division of Investigative Services. I also have to submit a request up my chain of command, which is through Field Services, to get approval on my end. It has to be approved by the Special Operations Commander, which is a major, and depending on the request, it may even go above his level to the lieutenant colonel, who is in charge of the Division of Field Services.

MR. O'HARA: Again, I say it was more of a courtesy notification, just to make sure we weren't on another assignment, that we had members who could respond that day. Obviously there was the weather issue that day, making sure members could respond to the scene.

MR. O'HARA: It was a blizzard. I think most areas received between 18 to 20 inches of snow.

MR. O'HARA: He said they were conducting a death investigation in the town of Canton and he was looking for SERT assistance with an evidence search.

MR. O'HARA: On that call, I told them we would have members that would be able to respond, and that I would start working on the approval process. Looking out my own window — I had been outside my house that day — I had large snow drifts at the end of my driveway. I told them building a roster and having members clear their driveway means at least an hour plus for a response time.

MR. O'HARA: Yeah — I'm not positive if he called me or if I called him. I think after I cleared my driveway I spoke to my captain, just to make sure — see what the status was on the approval process on our end. He said we were cleared on our end, so either Lieutenant Tully called me or I may have called him, because I was getting nervous — now that my driveway was clear — that the town plow was going to come back and block the end of my driveway again. So I'm not sure who called who, but I called him and told him we were cleared through the Division of Field Services. He also told me that we were cleared on his end — the approval requests had been approved.

MR. O'HARA: It's probably about quarter to four, because we sent out an alert to our team at 3:48 telling them that we were authorized to respond to Canton.

MR. O'HARA: So SERT is broken up — we're geographically dispersed across the state, so we have an East team and West team. I had reached out to a supervisor from the West team, someone I knew, who I wouldn't request to drive that far in the snowy conditions, to set up a roster for us. So he sent out an alert to the team at 2:53 requesting an availability list. I told him to just confirm that the people who respond either had a truck or some kind of four-wheel drive vehicle to respond.

MR. O'HARA: Lieutenant Tully told us that we were going to 34 Fairview Road in Canton.

MR. O'HARA: Well, like I said, the alert went out authorizing the team to start responding at 3:48. I got the exact address via text from Lieutenant Tully at 4:10. We sent out another alert message at 4:17 just reminding people to bring shovels, brooms, rakes, etc. I left my house at 4:13 in the afternoon and I got on scene at 4:56, so it took me 43 minutes to drive there.

MR. O'HARA: Probably 20 minutes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Initially we dispatched eight members, including myself. Only seven of us made it to the scene — one of the members could not get off his street. The end of his street had been plowed in by his town, and he had called his town DPW to try to get some assistance, but he was not able to make it to the scene. So we only had seven — again, after we initially started with eight — which did kind of shift some of the dynamics of how we ran the search on scene.

MR. O'HARA: Just one other trooper from SERT. Trooper Beausoleil was on scene — I believe he arrived two minutes prior to my arrival.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir. It's Trooper Jason Beausoleil — B-E-A-U-S-O-L-E-I-L.

MR. O'HARA: You're welcome.

MR. O'HARA: Trooper Beausoleil was just past the driveway of the house, so just north of the driveway. I parked almost at the end of the driveway of 34 Fairview.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Vehicles near the driveway were facing away from the flagpole originally. Eventually we moved his vehicle back towards the flagpole — we just wanted some extra headlights to light up the scene, the area we would be working in.

MR. O'HARA: He was not.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, I gave him a call. He stated he was just leaving Canton PD, and would be on scene in about five minutes. That was probably around 5 o'clock.

MR. O'HARA: We didn't see anyone outside the houses. A resident of 34 Fairview exited briefly after we were first on scene — that was the only person we saw.

MR. O'HARA: He was — if you look at the house, there's — you consider two front doors, one on the [— closer to the garage, which would maybe be a mud room or a den. An adult male exited from that door with a hooded sweatshirt on. He asked us if we were here for what had happened earlier. We said yes, and he walked back inside the house.

MR. O'HARA: The plow really only cleared the center of the road. There was a good 3 to 4 foot snow drift coming off each side of the road, so maybe enough for two vehicles to pass, but not cleared — excuse me — cleared curb to curb.

MR. O'HARA: He had instructed us that the death investigation involved a motor vehicle. He told us where the motor vehicle was believed to have been parked and to search from that area south towards the flagpole and fire hydrant.

MR. O'HARA: We've really never done evidence searches like this. We've done missing person searches — we've gone out for those — but for evidence searches, nothing like this. If a scene could be secured, we really wouldn't respond in a situation like this unless we really needed to.

MR. O'HARA: Yeah, we're a stage two response, so pretty much every search we've ever done has been previously searched. We're never really the first persons to search an area.

MR. O'HARA: I think our training is a lot different than maybe the regular patrolman or trooper responding. There's not much training provided anymore in the academy, so we do extensive training through a lot of the search and rescue groups that we're a part of, which would be the National Association for Search and Rescue, which is NASAR. We do search and rescue initial actions, we do line searching, managing lost person incidents, we do multiple trainings a month with the team, which is different than what other personnel would get. I think traditionally, looking back to even my time before I was a member of SERT, the search would be "you go this way, I'll go that way" — there was really no methodical approach to the search.

MR. O'HARA: We gridded off or marked off the area Lieutenant Tully thought would be the best area for us to search, so we had a starting point and an endpoint. Once all the members got on scene, we set up a line search, or what we call a grid search, which again would just be a slow, methodical search with all of us working in unison moving through the area.

MR. O'HARA: Just over 50 feet, I believe — from the front door, which is the left door looking at the house from the street, to the fire hydrant. I believe it was 59 feet.

MR. O'HARA: That is the length.

MR. O'HARA: About 3 to 4 feet — that was the snow drift coming off the curb.

MR. O'HARA: Yeah, Lieutenant Tully had informed us that the victim in this case was struck by a vehicle. He believed there would be broken pieces of tail light in the area. He also stated the victim was missing his sneaker, so he asked us to search for both of those items.

MR. O'HARA: After we found one or two of the pieces of the tail light, I asked him if he knew how much damage had been done to the tail light, or if he had a photo that we could get of the tail light.

MR. O'HARA: He told us at that time the vehicle was being towed back to Canton PD, so he did not have a photo to show us.

MR. O'HARA: He said Sergeant Bukhenik and Trooper Proctor were following the vehicle back to Canton PD.

MR. O'HARA: So like I said, we moved Trooper Beausoleil's vehicle to face the scene to give us extra headlights for the scene. All the team members also put on a headlamp, which would basically just be like a hiking headlamp. We all had shovels, we had a couple of rakes — the smaller garden rakes — just to kind of help us sift through the snow. And I also had a small push broom to move the snow around as well.

MR. O'HARA: It was poor lighting. There really wasn't much as far as what we had for street lighting, but with the headlamps we had decent visibility.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it was.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Nothing that really helped the search.

MR. O'HARA: We started almost directly across from the front door and moved south towards Chapman Street, towards the fire hydrant.

MR. O'HARA: Our right flank was on the curb, and then we moved out across the street from there. So we were lined almost shoulder to shoulder as we moved south through the area.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: We did. One of the members who was working along the curb started to clear some of the grass on the front lawn.

MR. O'HARA: It was very difficult to clear the snow. I don't think we had very good visibility on what we were moving, even with the push broom and the rake. It was very difficult to definitively say we'd cleared the lawn properly, so we didn't focus too much of our efforts on that area.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. Normally on a search, if I'm the team leader, I would run what you consider a command post, or be the Incident Commander. I would stay behind the line and kind of document our efforts, but because this was such a small search area it wasn't really an issue — we weren't breaking people off into teams, no one was out of my sight line, and we had multiple detectives on scene that were able to fill that role for me.

MR. O'HARA: I believe there were about five other members. I believe there were only two that I recognized from the state police, so I'm not sure who the other three were — they were Canton detectives or Canton patrolmen, but they were all dressed in, you know, plainclothes.

MR. O'HARA: As we began to find evidence, I spoke to Lieutenant Tully and just confirmed that he was going to document everything we were recovering via photograph and evidence log.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, they were, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. As soon as we found anything deemed as evidence, we stopped our search efforts until they were documented by Lieutenant Tully.

MR. O'HARA: I found multiple pieces of red and clear tail light.

MR. O'HARA: They were on the street, in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant.

MR. O'HARA: I believe maybe six or seven pieces.

MR. O'HARA: There were three larger pieces — two red, one clear — and then a couple of smaller pieces.

MR. O'HARA: We found a sneaker.

MR. O'HARA: Same location generally — it was in between the flagpole and the fire hydrant. The sneaker was flush up against the curb and it was upside down. I think we had found one piece of tail light prior to the sneaker, and then after we found the sneaker we found a few more additional pieces of ...tail light.

MR. O'HARA: Where were they in relation to — can you repeat the end of that, sir?

MR. O'HARA: They were close to the curb. As we started digging originally, the snow drift — the snow pack was pretty solid from where the plow had kind of cleared to. So once we were able to move through that, we started getting into fresh, undisturbed snow. Started moving through that, which is a lot easier to move at that point. And all the items we found were close to the curb.

MR. O'HARA: They were all found at ground level.

MR. O'HARA: No, we did not see anything. So, like I said, it was all fresh, undisturbed snow once we got past where the plow had cleared up to.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: So, like I stated, we had — we consider our right flank — stood on the curb closest to the house, and then we moved left into the street. As we dug the snow out, it was originally inspected — as they would pull their shovel out, make sure they didn't have anything in their shovel to the best of their ability, then they would bring it out to the street. I was the left flank. They would dump it in the street and I would sift through it at the end, just to make sure there was no evidence that had come out to the street. Once I was positive nothing was in that snow, I would toss it onto the other side of the street, and we just continued that process as we moved south through that grid.

MR. O'HARA: You know, I would say that was probably about a 3-plus-foot in height, but as we moved into the snow itself, getting closer to the curb, that was level with the rest of the area — what was on the front lawn, which was on the neighbor's lawn — so probably eight, maybe 18 inches of snow.

MR. O'HARA: After Lieutenant Tully showed up and informed us where we were going to search, we moved Trooper

MR. O'HARA: 's vehicle at 5:20, and that's when the rest of the team started to show up, right around 5:21, 5:24. A couple of other members with extended response time showed up a little bit after that, but all members were on scene by 5:41. We had already started the process before they had all arrived on scene, and we were complete by 6:15. We started to wrap up and clear the area.

MR. O'HARA: So after we found the sneaker and a couple of additional pieces of tail light, we moved south for — I'd say over 5 feet, maybe closer to 8 to 10 feet — without finding any other pieces of evidence. So Lieutenant Tully and I had a conversation. He was very satisfied that we had found everything we were going to locate at that time, and we decided to suspend the search.

MR. O'HARA: I told Lieutenant Tully we'll do a debrief at the end. We'll go over probability of detection — how I feel, whether we would have found everything that was there. I told him that there was a good chance we did not find everything. I said, if you wanted us to come back in the daylight — which would give us better lighting to search — or after a couple of days, the weather was supposed to warm up, if you wanted us to come back after there was some snow melt, just reach out to me and we would come back.

MR. O'HARA: No, that was in consultation with Lieutenant Tully.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, I know both of them, sir.

MR. O'HARA: No, they were not on scene.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. They were not there, no, sir.

MR. O'HARA: So, we don't recover evidence. We'll stop and halt our search — sometimes we've been waiting for Crime Scene to show up for 2 hours before we've continued to search. So once we found the first piece of tail light, again I conferred with Lieutenant Tully, asked him if he was documenting it and recovering everything. He stated that he was. Once we felt comfortable that he had done that properly, we then continued the search.

MR. O'HARA: No.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. Yes. Yeah, they let me run the search the way I deem best.

MR. O'HARA: We had one of our members use a handheld GPS — we use a Garmin 64st — and he marked each item we found, which we can then upload later to a map, which we did later that evening.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. So the Garmin GPS we use — it connects to four different satellites to give you the best range of your location. There obviously is some margin of error involved with GPSs, but he was able to stamp three of the items — three pieces of the tail light. But as he was marking those items on his GPS, they kept — because they were in such close proximity, they were almost marking directly on top of each other. So he only marked three of them because it was just going to clutter the map as we continued, if you were to mark all the pieces we located.

MR. O'HARA: They were the larger pieces, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir. It's the area we searched and some of the evidence that we recovered.

MR. O'HARA: 034 — I'm sorry, one — hold on — might be backwards here. Yes, 111, sir.

MR. O'HARA: This is the flag pole in front of the house. As you move south, this appears to be one of the pieces of tail light that we recovered.

MR. O'HARA: Yes —

MR. O'HARA: It was still snowing, and you can see some of the snowflakes falling here by the flag pole.

MR. O'HARA: It was windy, but it really didn't impact how we were searching through the area.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is — sort of a different perspective of the same area that you were talking about in the last photograph.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is, and again a sort of closer perspective to the tail light that you were referring to.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is. Again, a closer up image of that same piece of tail light as it was observed when you recovered it. Correct. And you can see right here to the left of the tail light — that is the molding of a shovel. So this piece of tail light was picked up by one of the team member's shovels, and as they overturned it, you can see the tail light came up as they were searching through the area. This is kind of the markings of the shovel itself.

MR. O'HARA: The issue is I'm trying to move away from —

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: You see the piece of tail light that we recovered, and again this is kind of the overturned snow from the shovel, and again seeing the markings from the shovel from where it was overturned.

MR. O'HARA: This is one of the larger pieces, sir.

MR. O'HARA: I guess a couple of inches, but I didn't measure it.

MR. O'HARA: So this is the SERT members working through the area, again working as a line through the grid formation. One of the things we stress is your critical separation — making sure you're close enough to each other that you won't miss a piece of evidence. If you're too far apart, you will miss that. A lot of times before searches, we will take an item of similar size — the similar size item that we're looking for — and we'll space out. Because this was such a condensed search area, we just had the team members stand almost shoulder to shoulder as they search through the area.

MR. O'HARA: May be a little difficult to see from a distance, but right here, this is the sneaker that we recovered.

MR. O'HARA: It's flush up against the curb. I'm sorry, I apologize, sir — right here, this would be the curbing right here.

MR. O'HARA: It's a closer photo of the sneaker. Sneaker is in the bottom right down here.

MR. O'HARA: Again, you're looking at the sneaker. This is just a closer, zoomed-in photo. And this would be the curbing right here, and the sneaker's [unintelligible] in this particular photograph.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir. You see the curbing right here.

MR. O'HARA: The sneaker was completely buried. It wasn't until we started digging through the snow that we found the sneaker.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: This is a clear piece of the tail light right here.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: A different angle of the piece of clear tail light that was recovered.

MR. O'HARA: It's difficult to see, but there's a piece of clear tail light right here. I can see with the photo in front of me, but I'm not sure if the jurors can see it from that distance. But there is a clear piece of tail light in this location.

MR. O'HARA: Again, there's a piece of clear tail light right in this location.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Again, there's a piece of clear tail light — again, might be difficult from the distance for the jurors — but it's in this location here.

MR. O'HARA: There's a larger piece of red tail light located on the ground in this location.

MR. O'HARA: : Yes.

MR. O'HARA: It's a closer photo of the same piece of tail light right here, located on the ground.

MR. O'HARA: We see a small piece of tail light, I believe, in this location right here. It's a small piece of tail light right on the ground right here in this location.

MR. O'HARA: examines

MR. O'HARA: Yes, I do, sir.

MR. O'HARA: This is the mapping system we use to map evidence we recover.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, they are.

MR. O'HARA: In the afternoon, yeah. The marks showing on the map — they're a little offset, but that falls in the range of error with the handheld GPS's.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: So for GPS's, the typical range of error on a clear day is up to 16 feet. Obviously we didn't have a clear day — we had atmospheric conditions, cloudy, snowy conditions. GPS's can be affected for range accuracy by a few different things. One is the satellite geometry — as I said before, the GPS connects to four different satellites. You also could have signal blockage. Blockage could occur from trees, buildings, bridges. Then you have atmospheric conditions, like I mentioned. And then you have the receiver end — any issues with your receiver end, which is actually the handheld GPS. Those will be the four main issues, and why you may have a little offset on your GPS readings. But again, typically under clear sky conditions, would be up to 16 feet.

MR. O'HARA: Back here — I've listed as the command post, which is where my vehicle was parked. We have the address, which is the house, 34 Fairview. Then as you move further south, you'll see the first red plastic that we recovered — which again was a larger piece of red plastic — kind of stamped on top of each other. But you'll see the sneaker, you'll see a second red piece of plastic, and you'll see the fire hydrant, all marked on the map.

MR. O'HARA: Exhibit 136. Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: We just changed the layering on the map, just to make it a little easier to read. So we removed the tail light pieces, and now we just have the sneaker and the fire hydrant listed on the map here.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir. Again, we started closer to — almost directly across from the front door. The evidence — recovery all happened between the flagpole and the fire hydrant.

MR. O'HARA: The search would have begun right in this area, and as we move south we started finding pieces of evidence right around here.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. We had gone past the fire hydrant, hadn't found any other pieces of evidence — it's probably closer to 8 to 10 feet, and that's when we suspended the search.

MR. O'HARA: Heading south towards Chapman Street, so down in this location would be where we stopped.

MR. O'HARA: No, I was not.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. We did not know how much damage there was.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: So probability of detection, it winds up turning into a mathematical formula. To make it simpler, give us more of a baseline objective on how well we did searching the area — it covers 10 different categories. We'll rate those categories 1 through 10 on how we feel we did, and kind of come up with a score to give just a baseline on what we think, percentage-wise, we would have found the objects we're looking for. Those categories would include terrain as number one, hazards would be two, lighting would be three, weather would be four, vegetation would be five — which in this case would have been some of the grass we encountered as we got on the front lawn.

MR. O'HARA: As you continue on would be your spacing, which again is how the team members are separated as we're searching through the area, the tactics you're using, the area size, then the team composition, and then the last one is instinct and variables. And really the last two, I think, is what works best for us — what stands out most about our team is your team composition and the instincts, just for the experience we have in searching.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.