PLYMOUTH, Massachusetts (AP) — The family of police officer Karen Read’s boyfriend, who allegedly hit him with their car and left him to die in the snow, has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her and two bars where they were drinking that night.
The lawsuit blames Read for John O’Keefe’s death, but also for the negligence of the bars that continued to serve her drinks despite signs of intoxication. At the first bar, she was served seven alcoholic drinks in about 90 minutes on the evening of January 28, 2022, and Read carried the last drink to the second bar, where she was served a shot and an alcoholic mixed drink within an hour.
The complaint does not indicate how much alcohol was served to O’Keefe that evening before he got into Read’s SUV.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts by Paul O’Keefe on behalf of his family and his brother’s estate, names Read, the Waterfall Bar & Grill and CF McCarthy’s as defendants and calls for a jury trial.
Calls to Read’s attorneys seeking comment on the civil suit were not immediately returned Tuesday. A person who answered the phone at Waterfall said the owners were unavailable, and another person at CF McCarthy’s declined to comment.
Read has pleaded not guilty and awaits a retrial on Jan. 27. She is charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol and hit-and-run. Her two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial after the jury said they could not agree. The judge rejected arguments that the jury later unanimously found Read not guilty of the murder and hit-and-run charges.
After the bar crawl, Read, 44, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, dropped O’Keefe, who has worked for the Boston police for 16 years, off at another cop’s house in Canton. His body was found in the front yard. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.
Read’s lawyers argued that O’Keefe was killed in the house and that those involved decided to pin the blame on her because she was a “convenient outsider.”
The lawsuit says Read and O’Keefe argued and she knew she had hit him with her SUV before she returned to his house. She allegedly woke up his 14-year-old niece several hours later and said something had happened to O’Keefe and that he might have been hit by her or a snow plow.
