Kevin O'Hara — Direct

MR. O'HARA: Good 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.

MR. O'HARA: There's 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 Fourth 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: Normally, we'll receive a courtesy phone call, which I received from Lieutenant Tully, seeing if we were available, if we had members that could respond today for an incident that 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 upon 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'd say it was more of a courtesy notification just to make sure that we weren't on another assignment, that we had members that could respond that day. Obviously, there was the weather issue that day and making sure members could respond to the scene.

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

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

MR. O'HARA: I told him 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 him, building a roster and having members clear their driveway, at least an hour plus on our 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, to 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. My driveway was clear, but the town plow was going to come back and bury the end of my driveway again. So I'm not sure who called who, but I called him and told him that we were cleared through the division of field services. He also told me that we were cleared on his end; the approval request had been approved.

MR. O'HARA: It was probably about quarter of 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 are geographically dispersed across the state. So we have an east team, a west team. I had reached out to the supervisor from the west team, someone I know who I wouldn't request to drive that far in the snowing 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 responding either hada 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: Like I stated, 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, et cetera. 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 the street had been plowed in by his town. 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 at eight, which kind of shifts some of the dynamics of how we ran the search on scene.

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

MR. O'HARA: Yes. It's Trooper Jason Beausoleil. It's 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, 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: We were facing away from the flagpole originally. Eventually, we moved Trooper Beausoleil's vehicle back towards the flagpole. Just we 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 P.D. and would be on scene in about five minutes. It was probably around 5:00 o'clock.

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

MR. O'HARA: No. He was -- if you look at the house, there is two front doors, one closer to the garage, which was maybe a mudroom or a den. An adult male exited from that door, had 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 had really only cleared the center of the road. There was a good three- to four-foot snowdrift coming off each side of the road. So maybe enough for two vehicles to pass but not cleared curb to curb.

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

MR. O'HARA: In blizzard conditions, we've really never done evidence searches like this. We've done missing person searches we've gone out to. But for evidence searches, nothing like this. If something -- if a scene could be secured, we really wouldn't respond ina Situation like this unless we really needed to.

MR. O'HARA: We are a Stage II response. So pretty much every search we've ever done has been previously searched. We're never really the first person to search an area.

MR. O'HARA: I think our training is a lot different than maybe the regular patrolmen or trooper responding. There's not much training provided anymore in the academies. So we do extensive training through a lot of the search-and-rescue groups that we are 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, a 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 end point. Once all the members got on scene, we set up a line search or what we would call a grid search which, again, would be just a slow, methodical search with all of us working in unison, moving through the area.

MR. O'HARA: It was 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 length.

MR. O'HARA: About three to four feet. There was a snowdrift coming off the curb.

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

MR. O'HARA: After we had found one or two of the pieces of the taillight, I asked him if he knew how big, how much damage was the taillight or if he had a photo that we could get of the taillight.

MR. O'HARA: He told us at that time the vehicle was being towed back to Canton P.D. 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 P.D.

MR. O'HARA: So like I said, we moved Trooper Beausoleil's vehicle to face the scene to use his headlights for extra light for the scene. All the team members also put on a headlamp which was basically just 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 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 lined almost shoulder to shoulder as we moved down, as we moved south through the area we were searching.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

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

MR. O'HARA: It was very difficult to clear the snow. I don't think we had very good visibility in what we were moving, even with the push broom and the rake. It was very difficult to definitively say we had 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 overall -- as a team leader, I would run what you would consider the command post, be the incident commander for SERT. 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 because we weren't breaking people off in a team to know it 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 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, whether they were Canton detectives or Canton patrolmen. But they were all dressed in plainclothes.

MR. O'HARA: As we began to find evidence, I spoke to Lieutenant Tully just to confirm 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: We found multiple pieces of red and clear taillight.

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 was three larger pieces, two red, one clear and then a couple smaller pieces.

MR. O'HARA: We found a sneaker.

MR. O'HARA: It was the 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 found one piece of taillight prior to the sneaker. And then after we found the sneaker, we found a few more additional pieces of taillight.

MR. O'HARA: Can you repeat the end of that, sir?

MR. O'HARA: Close to the curb. As we started digging originally, the snowdrift, the snow pack was pretty solid from where the plow had cleared to. So once we were able to move through that, we started getting into fresh, undisturbed snow and started moving through that, which was a lot easier to move at that point. And all of 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, sir. Like I said, it was all fresh, undisturbed snow once we got past wherever the plow had cleared up to.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Like I stated, we had what we considered 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 and make sure they didn't have anything in their shovel to the best of their ability. And 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 that nothing was in that snow, I would toss it onto the other side of the street. We just continued that process as we moved south through that grid.

MR. O'HARA: Where the plow had touched, you know, clear to, I'd say that was probably about a three-plus foot in height. But, as we moved into the snow, itself, getting closer to the curb, I was in level with the rest of the area, what was on the front lawn, what was on the neighbor's lawn. So probably maybe 18 inches of snow.

MR. O'HARA: After Lieutenant Tully showed up and kind of informed us where we were going to search, we moved Trooper Beausoleil'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 taillight, we moved south for, I'd say, over five feet, maybe closer to eight to 10 feet, without finding any other pieces of evidence. 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 found everything that was there. I told him there was a good chance we did not find everything and said, if you want us to come back in the daylight to 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 to reach out to me and we would come back.

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

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

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

MR. O'HARA: No. They were not on scene.

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

MR. O'HARA: So we don't recover evidence. We will stop and halt our search. Sometimes we've been waiting for crime scene to show up for two hours before we continue the search. So once we found the first piece of taillight, again, I conferred with Lieutenant Tully and asked him if he was documenting it and covering everything. He stated that he was. Once we felt comfortable that he had done that properly, we then continued the search.

MR. O'HARA: He is not, no.

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

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

MR. O'HARA: Correct. So the Garmin GPS that we use, it connects to four different satellites to give you a best range of your location. There obviously is some range error involved with GPSs. But he was able to stamp three of the items, three pieces of the taillight. 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 we were to mark all of these that 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: Okay. Thank you.

MR. O'HARA: Yes. 111, sir.

MR. O'HARA: This is a flagpole in front of the house. As you move south, this appears to be one of the pieces of taillight that we recovered.

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

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

MR. O'HARA: Okay.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: Correct. And you can see right here to the left of the taillight, that is the molding of a shovel. So this piece of taillight was picked up by one of the team members' shovels. And, as they overturned it, you can see the taillight came up as they were searching through the area. And this is kind of the markings of the shovel, itself.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, it is.

MR. O'HARA: You can see the piece of taillight that we recovered. And, again, this is 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, sir.

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 critical separation, making sure you're close enough to each other that you won't miss a piece of evidence. If you are too far apart, you will miss that. A lot of times before searches, we will take an item of similar, Similar size item that we are looking for, and we will space out. Because this was such a condensed search area, we just had the team members stand almost shoulder to shoulder as they searched through the area.

MR. O'HARA: It may be a little difficult to see froma distance. But right here is the sneaker that we recovered.

MR. O'HARA: It's flush up against the curb.

MR. O'HARA: I apologize, sir. Right here. This would be the curbing right here (indicating.)

MR. O'HARA: It's a closer photo of the sneaker. The 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 (indicating).

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir. You can 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 Exhibit 125, is the photo I have in front of me. This would be -- it might be difficult for them to see, but this is a clear piece of the taillight right here (indicating).

MR. O'HARA: You can see a little closer, a zoomed-in version of the clear piece of taillight that was recovered.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

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

MR. O'HARA: It's difficult to see, but there is a piece of clear taillight right here (indicating). I can see it 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 taillight in this location.

MR. O'HARA: Again, there is a piece of clear taillight right in this location (indicating).

MR. O'HARA: Yes, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Again, there is a piece of clear taillight. It might be difficult from the distance for the jurors, but it's in this location here (indicating).

MR. O'HARA: There is a larger piece of red taillight located on the ground in this location (indicating).

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

MR. O'HARA: There is a small piece of taillight, I believe, in this location right here.

MR. O'HARA: (Witness complies.)

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

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

MR. O'HARA: Yes, they are.

MR. O'HARA: Yes. The marks showing on the map, they are a little offset. But that falls within the range of error with the handheld GPSs.

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

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: So GPS's 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. GPSs can be affected for the range accuracy by a few different things. One is the satellite geometry. As I said before, the GPSs connect 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 would be the four main issues and why you may have a little offset on your GPS readings. But, again, typically, under clear sky conditions, it would be up to 16 feet.

MR. O'HARA: I've listed this 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 the 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: 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 taillight pieces and now we just have the sneaker and the fire hydrant listed on the map here.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir. 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 moved south, we started finding pieces of evidence right around here (indicating).

MR. O'HARA: Correct. We had gone past the fire hydrant and hadn't found any other pieces of evidence for it's probably closer to eight 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, sir. That would be probability of detection.

MR. O'HARA: Correct.

MR. O'HARA: So probability of detection 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 one through 10 on how we feel we did and kind of come up with a score to give just a baseline of what we think percentage-wise we would have found, the objects we're looking for. Those categories would include the terrain, 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. As you continue on, with your spacing, which is, again, how the team members are separated as we are searching through the area; the tactics you're using; the area size. Then the team composition and then the last one is instincts and variables. Really the last two, I think, is what works best for us. What stands out most about our team is the team composition and instincts from the experience that we have in searching.

MR. O'HARA: Correct, sir.

MR. O'HARA: Thank you, sir.