[Source via Boston Globe By Sean Cotter and John R Ellement]
More than two years after he received only a ticket for a crash that ultimately killed a disabled man, a State Police sergeant was indicted Thursday on a charge that he was driving drunk and is responsible for the man’s death.
Sergeant Scott Quigley, 41, of Woburn, faces a felony charge of motor vehicle homicide for the head-on collision in 2023, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin R. Hayden’s office said.
The crash garnered little attention at the time, and the State Police troopers who investigated — Quigley’s colleagues — handed out only the ticket for a moving violation. But in recent months, court filings in another criminal case and body-camera footage obtained by the Boston Herald thrust both the crash and its treatment from members of the beleaguered Massachusetts State Police to the forefront.
Hayden’s office said “aspects of the case and its initial handling by State Police, which resulted in a warning to Quigley for crossing marked lanes, remain under investigation.”
Hayden’s office is handling the investigation because Quigley was an investigator assigned to Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office at the time.
Quigley’s lawyer, Christina Pujals Ronan, said he’s never previously been the subject of disciplinary proceedings in his 14 years as a trooper or other time as a local police officer and time deployed with the Army.
She said in a statement that Quigley has maintained “this was an unfortunate and tragic accident — not a criminal act. He remains confident that the objective evidence will ultimately support his account of what occurred. He looks forward to his day in court.”
State Police Colonel Geoffrey Noble said in a statement Thursday that the agency “will not tolerate the disturbing misconduct alleged in today’s indictment.”
Noble said the agency will continue cooperating with the investigation, while also protecting “the reputation of the many troopers who serve honorably, and the public’s trust, which is essential to our mission.”
He added, “I expect and demand that our members understand their responsibility to act with the highest level of integrity, professionalism, and respect for the law.”
On Dec. 12, 2023, Quigley collided head-on with a van whose passengers included 37-year-old Angelo Schettino, who had developmental challenges and used a wheelchair while he was being driven back to his group home in Lynn, according to Hayden’s office. The van driver was also injured in the crash.
Schettino died a month later from injuries suffered in the crash.
Quigley spent eight months on injury leave after the crash. The State Police relieved him of duty on Jan. 28, and he remains suspended.
Legal filings in an Essex County murder case Quigley investigated and a separate lawsuit allege that Quigley, in his role as a detective assigned to Ryan’s office,was driving an unmarked police cruiser when he crossed the center line around 5:30 p.m. and struck the van.
Last month, a judge in a civil case brought by Schettino’s family ordered the hospital that treated Quigley after the crash to turn over his toxicology results to the plaintiffs.
Those results, a defense lawyer in the separate murder case said in a recent court filing, show that Quigley’s blood alcohol content was 0.10 at the hospital. The legal limit is 0.08.
A lawyer for Quigley in the civil case said in a statement last month that his client “absolutely denies being impaired by alcohol at the time of the unfortunate accident in which he was involved.”
No public documentation on the new charge was immediately available, as files are in the process of being relocated from Suffolk to Middlesex Superior Court, where the case will be tried.
Schettino’s family had initially filed suit in Essex Superior Court in January 2025 against Bridgewell, a nonprofit that owned the van he was riding in during the crash, records show.
The following month, Bridgewell filed a third-party complaint naming the State Police as a defendant in the suit, citing Quigley’s alleged “recklessness” in the crash, according to legal filings.
Quigley is currently named as an “other interested party” in the suit but not as a defendant, records show.
A previous lawyer for Quigley conceded in a court filing on Jan. 12 that Quigley was to blame for the crash. But the lawyer argued Quigley was immune from being sued, and that any lawsuit must be against the State Police.
A State Police report on the crash included in the civil filings said that Schettino, who used a wheelchair, sustained a “suspected minor injury” in the collision.
The report said Quigley couldn’t be interviewed at the scene of the crash because of his injuries, but he provided a statement to investigators eight days later.
On that date, Quigley “stated he remembers feeling fatigued and lightheaded” before the crash, and that “his next memory was post-crash and when he was awakened by the sound of emergency responders and vehicles, who were on scene. … SGT. Quigley was unable to recall the cause of the crash or how the crash occurred.”
In a statement in February, the Middlesex district attorney’s office said that State Police did not disclose “that a person had died following a motor vehicle crash involving SGT. Quigley” until Jan. 27.
“On that same date, MSP also provided, for the first time, information about Sergeant Quigley’s toxicology report,” the statement said. “On January 28, this Office disclosed the information provided to us to the Court and defense counsel in the pending murder trial.”
Ryan has requested that State Police initiate an independent investigation into “why the information had not been provided to this office,” the statement said.
Schettino’s family said he was born in Malden and raised in Saugus.
“Angelo was a beloved member of the Bridgewell Community,” the family wrote in a tribute published on a funeral home’s website.