AUGUSTA — Suzanne Tanner sat up straighter and leaned across a table to hear what a truck driver had to say about the crash that killed her 12-year-old daughter last summer.

Tanner, 49, of Westport, Conn., wore a fringed pashmina shawl in “Tessie blue” in memory of her daughter, Tess Meisel, at the hearing. Truck driver Charles H. Willey, 54, of Dexter, was appealing a three-year suspension of his driver’s license imposed by the Bureau of Motor Vehicles.

Tanner said her daughter was extraordinary and brought some of her poetry to share with others at the hearing.

“We’re here to make sure the system does its job, and I have faith in the system,” Tanner said. “While I can’t bring my daughter back, I can help other families protect their loved ones on the roads of Maine.”

Wearing the same blue shawls at the hearing were the two girls injured in the Aug. 17 accident. Willey’s sawdust-loaded 18-wheeler tipped over at an interchange on U.S. Route 2 in Farmington and crushed the rear of a YMCA minivan carrying campers and two counselors from Camp Jewell in Colebrook, Conn.

Meisel was in the rear seat of the minivan, which was stopped in traffic.

Thursday’s administrative appeal hearing took place at the Bureau of Motor Vehicles headquarters in Augusta, and hearing examiner Frank Naiman did not immediately issue a decision on Willey’s appeal of the license suspension.

Thomas Marjerison, Willey’s attorney, asked Naiman to wait for at least seven days so the attorney could present several points in writing.

Willey, of Dexter, testified that it was his second trip of the day hauling sawdust from Dixfield to Athens. He had been delivering three loads a day along the same route for eight months for Linkletter Trucking of Athens.

Willey described following a Subaru whose driver braked several times, appearing uncertain whether to go straight on Route 4 to a traffic signal or whether to take a right-hand curve of about 250 feet to merge into U.S. 2. The Subaru went straight and Willey headed for the curve.

“It’s a one-way street; you have to watch vehicles coming through,” he said.

He said he was on a 30 mph section of the road, approaching a 35 mph sign.

“I looked back,” he said. “I felt the trailer floating. When I was looking I noticed it was floating. I tried to steer it to the right to straighten it out and accelerated some. As I did that, the front tire caught the curb. I bounced my head off the window and it knocked me out.”

Willey said he did not know whether the 100,000 pounds of sawdust in the trailer had shifted or not. “It rocked. You could feel it rock,” he said.

Marjerison agreed that Willey was driving the truck when the accident occurred, but said the state would have to prove whether Willey was negligent or reckless and whether that caused the girl’s death.

A chaotic scene

Farmington police officer Wayne H. Drake testified he was the first officer on the scene, and found Willey trapped in the tractor.

“The scene was chaotic,” Drake said. He and the fire chief found Meisel dead in the minivan.

Richard McAlister, formerly an accident reconstructionist with the Maine State Police and now working for a private firm, said information from the truck’s black box, an electronic control module, showed the truck was going between 32 and 37 mph when it crashed.

State troopers testified that their calculations showed the speed could have been as high as 41 mph.

McAlister said the higher speeds occurred when the vehicle tipped and one of the drive axles was off the ground and spinning faster.

“He was coming out of the corner too fast,” said Trooper Aaron Turcotte, who conducted a reconstruction of the accident.

Trooper Mark Lopez testified that records showed Willey drove at least 39 trips between Athens and Dixfield over the four weeks before the accident.

“I think he got into the corner at a bad angle with his weight and size,” Lopez said. “I think it was a combination of speed, weight and steering movement.”

Legal issues

Turcotte said there were initially no citations issued, but he issued a summons to Willey in March after he was contacted by the district attorney. Willey previously paid a waiver fee to settle a traffic violation of imprudent speed in connection with the crash.

He also faces a civil infraction charge of causing the death of a person while committing a traffic infraction and has a court date in Farmington on Tuesday in that case. Penalties for that infraction can include a fine of up to $5,000 and a license suspension of 14 days to four years.

Marjerison said Willey’s license is suspended, pending Naiman’s ruling. If Willey loses the administrative appeal, that matter could then be appealed to a superior court judge.

Camp counselor Katie Ethridge, of Moorestown, N.J., who was not hurt in the crash, watched Thursday’s hearing, as did fellow counselor Charles Powell, who drove the minivan the day of the crash.

“For me, after the accident, I felt guilty even though I had done nothing wrong,” Ethridge said. “I don’t understand how someone avoids feelings of guilt when it was so blatantly your fault.”

Marjerison objected to the presence of television cameras at the hearing and said it violated Willey’s due process rights and would further a civil case being brought by the girl’s family.

“The vast majority of other cases with fatalities do not result in three-year suspensions for the drivers,” he said.

Tanner said she had yet to file a civil lawsuit in the case, but said she had contacted an attorney and one was pending.

She tried to ask a question during the hearing, but was not recognized.

Betty Adams — 621-5631

badams@centralmaine.com

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