AUBURN, Maine — “I am Cassidy. I am not ‘that girl in the hayride’ accident you read about in the newspaper. I’m not ‘the victim’ legislators and lawyers use in their briefings; and I’m not just the person who is notably missing in this courtroom. I cannot be reduced to words or works. My spirit is too big.”
That is how the victim impact statement, written by Cassidy Charette’s parents from the late Oakland teenager’s perspective, began. It was written to tell Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy how many people have been affected by the 17-year-old’s death in a hayride accident on the night of Oct. 11, 2014.
The family’s attorney, Jodi Nofsinger of Lewiston, read the statement Tuesday when Harvest Hill Farm Inc., which operated the hayride in Mechanic Falls, pleaded guilty to a felony in connection with Charette’s death.
The girl died after a trailer she was riding on overturned more than two years ago. The driver of a Jeep towing the wagon lost control of the vehicle on a downhill section of the ride during a haunted hayride at Harvest Hill’s Pumpkin Land on Route 26 in Mechanic Falls.
Twenty-one other people, most of whom were teenagers, were hurt. Several were treated at local hospitals for serious injuries.
Reading from the victim impact statement, Nofsinger told Kennedy that although no one else died that night, many were forever affected by the accident.
“My friends, only teenagers themselves, lost a piece of their lives,” she read from the statement. “You took away their innocence, their sense of security, trust and hope. Many live with guilt, anger, sadness and an emptiness that can never be filled.
“My family is incomplete,” she continued. “My bedroom is vacant. Our house, once filled with constant laughter and joy, has become silent. Gatherings are stifled with grief, and our once treasured holidays together, are overshadowed by the empty chair.”
Randy and Monica Charette did not attend the hearing, Nofsinger said.
In exchange for Harvest Hill’s guilty plea to one count of aggravated driving to endanger, a Class C felony, the Androscoggin County district attorney’s office dropped a Class A manslaughter charge against the company, according to the farm’s attorney, Michael Whipple of Portland.
The farm’s owner, Peter Bolduc, who was not personally charged in the case, did not address the court Tuesday, his attorney said after the hearing.
The corporation also was ordered to pay a $7,500 fine, Whipple said. All but $575 of the fine was suspended under the condition that the farm donate the remaining $6,925 to charity.
Harvest Hill also is expected to be ordered to pay restitution to companies that insured the victims, according to Whipple. A hearing to determine the exact amount of restitution to be paid was set for Aug. 25, 2017.
The farm, mechanic Philip Theberge, 39, of Norway and driver David Brown, 56, of South Paris were charged with reckless conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by up to nearly a year in jail. Brown was found not guilty in September after a four-day trial. The charge against Theberge was dropped last month.
Settling the criminal case against Harvest Hill, filed in July in Kennebec County Superior Court, will allow a civil lawsuit filed by Cassidy Charette’s parents against the farm, Bolduc, Brown and Theberge to go forward.
“The admission of guilt in this criminal case validates what we have known from the early stages of the investigation — that the incident at Harvest Hill Farm on Oct. 11, 2014, was not just an unavoidable accident as some have suggested,” Nofsinger told the court. “Rather it was a tragedy that could have and should have been prevented. Cassidy Charette’s sudden passing on that night resulted from the fact that Harvest Hill Farm was knowingly operating in a negligent, unsafe manner.”
Harvest Hill no longer is operating, according to Whipple.
Now that the business has admitted negligence in the criminal case, it will not be able to deny that negligence in the civil suit, Nofsinger said.
A trial date has not been set.
Efforts to reach the Androscoggin County district attorney’s office were unsuccessful Tuesday.