A Canton Fire paramedic who claimed Karen Read said “I hit him” as she paced over John O’Keefe’s body in the snow will continue her testimony when day four of the murder trial gets started this morning.
“I asked her if there was any significant trauma that happened before this,” paramedic Katie McLaughlin testified on Thursday. “She said ‘I hit him.’ … She seemed very upset, hysterical I’d say.”
Jurors are also scheduled to take a trip to 34 Fairview Road in Canton today. That’s where O’Keefe’s body was found by first responders in the 6 a.m. hour on Jan. 29, 2022.
Read, 44, of Mansfield, is charged with second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter and leaving the scene of a collision causing the death of O’Keefe, a 16-year Boston police officer and her boyfriend of about two years at the time.
Prosecutors allege Read struck O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV by throwing the car into reverse and striking him at 24.2 mph and leaving him to die in the cold on the front lawn of the Canton home. The defense says that local and state police and prosecutors have conducted a massive frame-up job. They say his injuries don’t match being struck by a car and that he was beaten inside the home and then laid out on the lawn.
McLaughlin’s testimony matched or was similar to that of other paramedics who tended to O’Keefe the morning of Jan. 29, 2022, as well as the first Canton Police officer on the scene, Steven Saraf, who was the first to take the witness stand when the trial began on Monday.
Fellow Canton Police Officer Stephen Mullaney had similar recollections when he testified on Tuesday, but did not testify to any incriminating statements. Neither did two paramedics: Canton Fire Lt. Francis Walsh and Matthew Kelly.
Walsh remembered Read “screaming and crying” and repeatedly asking, “Is he alive?” and Kelly said he heard Read screaming, “He’s dead. He’s (expletive) dead!”
It’s uncertain if prosecutor Adam Lally had finished his direct questioning of McLaughlin or whether the day would begin with cross examination by defense attorneys David Yannetti, Alan Yannetti or Elizabeth Little.
This is a developing story.
