Trial starts in the crash that killed 13-year-old Jayden Cho-Sargent

Kellie Foley, mother of Jayden Cho-Sargent, and stepfather, Chris Foley, listen to testimony Tuesday during the civil trial of Laurie Young of South Paris in 8th District Court in Lewiston. Cho-Sargent’s younger brother is seated between the Foleys.

LEWISTON — The family of a 13-year-old middle school student watched a black and white video Tuesday of a pickup truck striking the boy as he made his way along a crosswalk.

“Oh God!” Kellie Foley, mother of Jayden Cho-Sargent, sobbed as she viewed the footage during the civil trial of Laurie Young, 55 of South Paris, in 8th District Court.

“She had time to stop!” Foley shouted repeatedly. “How could she not see him?”

Police got the surveillance video from a business near the scene of the accident on Main Street in Lewiston.

Young testified Tuesday that she only saw the boy at the last moment, when he was close enough to touch. She demonstrated by reaching to the front of the witness box.

Young had told two police officers and a witness at the scene of the crosswalk at Main and Frye streets that she hadn’t seen Cho-Sargent at all shortly after 7 a.m. on Nov. 3.

The red Ford F-150 pickup truck she was driving had struck the boy midway between the Ford insignia on the truck’s grill and the passenger-side headlight, an accident reconstructionist testified Tuesday. The teen was dragged under the truck until it stopped more than 200 feet beyond the crosswalk.

His sneakers lay in the street along with strewn school books, pens and pencils.

He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Young, who worked as an education technician at a local elementary school, was charged with a civil motor vehicle violation of failing to yield to a pedestrian in a walkway resulting in death.

If convicted of the charge, she could be fined up to $5,000 and have her driver’s license suspended for between 14 days and four years.

At an April hearing she denied the charge.

Judge Rick Lawrence presided over Tuesday’s bench trial. He took the matter under advisement at the end of the day, saying he planned to review the exhibits and expected to return a verdict Thursday morning.

Young testified Tuesday that she had dropped her husband off in Auburn, then drove into Lewiston up Main Street toward Farwell School where she was to work that day.

She said the visibility was poor in the light rain shortly before the sun would break the horizon. Glare from headlights and streetlights hampered her already impaired vision from environmental factors.

“I did not see him until he was in my headlights,” Young said she told police. “He was right there,” she said, stretching her arm its full length. It was at that point she recognized a person in front of her truck, she said.

Young said she stepped on the truck’s brake pedal, slowing, then pulled over to the side of the street. She climbed out of the truck and searched for the boy.

“I was lookin’ for him. I couldn’t find him. I ran around the truck. I couldn’t find him. Where’d he go?” she said.

She checked under the back of the truck, then under the front.

“There he was, underneath the truck. So I leaned down to him and I says, ‘Are you OK? He didn’t answer me.” she said, her voice rising.

She repeatedly asked the boy if he was OK. He never answered.

“I just freaked,” she said.

She asked a man to call 911 because she wasn’t able to.

Susan Robichaud of Auburn testified that she came upon the scene, spotting a sneaker in the road. She saw Young waving traffic around her truck. Robichaud said she thought at first the debris from Cho-Hayden had spilled from the back of Young’s truck.

She sat with Young, who was “very, very upset” and “very shaken.” Robichaud wrote in a police statement that Young told her she hadn’t seen Cho-Sargent and that her husband was going to be mad at her, according to Androscoggin County Assistant District Attorney Kate Bozeman.

Jeremy Somma, an accident reconstructionist with the Lewiston Police Department, analyzed the crash scene and determined that Young’s truck had been traveling at nearly 36 mph at the point of impact. He revised his estimate to a more conservative 34 mph, he said. The speed limit for that area was 25 mph.

Somma testified there were no typical braking skid marks on the pavement, only a tire mark that may have been caused by cloth under a tire as it braked.

Had Young been traveling at the posted maximum speed, Cho-Sargent would have had time at the rate he was walking to clear Young’s truck and the crash wouldn’t have happened, Somma concluded.

Weather conditions and low lighting were factors in the crash, Somma said. He said he didn’t believe Young could have seen Cho-Sargent with all of those conditions that were present that morning, including her estimated speed.

He said, “The overall speed she was traveling at based on those set of conditions I believe to be an imprudent speed.”

Richard McAlister, an expert in accident reconstruction who testified for the defense, said he agreed with Somma’s calculations and findings in his reconstruction report.

McAlister said that Young would only have been able to determine at 80 feet from the crosswalk that Cho-Sargent’s legs were illuminated. At the speed she was traveling, that would have given Young about one second to react, he said. Cho-Sargent had been wearing camouflage pants.

“Camouflage is difficult to see. That’s why it’s camouflage,” he said.

Had Young’s truck been traveling at 25 mph, she only would have had a half-second longer to react, he said.

“That’s not enough time for Jayden to clear the impact area,” McAlister said.

“Did Laurie Young have enough time to avoid the collision?” defense attorney Sarah Glynn asked him.

“No,” he said.

Under cross-examination, he said Cho-Jayden recognized at the last moment that a vehicle was coming at him in the crosswalk and tried to get out of its way.

In closing arguments, Bozeman told the judge that Cho-Sargent had been walking in a marked crosswalk in accordance with the law. Because Young failed to yield to him, she was in the wrong regardless of external factors. If she had trouble seeing, she had a duty to slow down to the point where she could see somebody walking in the crosswalk, Bozeman argued.

Glynn countered: “You cannot yield to that which you cannot see.”

She said a confluence of factors resulted in a “tragic accident.”

Young “couldn’t see him until it was too late,” Glynn said.

Bozeman said Young’s ability to see was irrelevant to Judge Lawrence’s determination as to whether Young had committed the violation with which she was charged. But Bozeman also noted that the witness who came upon the crash scene shortly after it happened had slowed and had been able to spot a single sneaker in the roadway.

cwilliams@sunjournal.com