The family of John O’Keefe, the Boston police officer killed in January 2022, filed a wrongful death lawsuit on Monday against his ex-girlfriend Karen Read and two bars in Canton, Massachusetts.
Read, 44, was accused of running over O’Keefe with her car after the couple spent the night bar crawling. The O’Keefe family has blamed the bars – McCarthy’s and Waterfall Bar & Grill – for over-serving Read, which the family says led to O’Keefe’s death.
O’Keefe’s brother, Paul O’Keefe, is the lead plaintiff in the civil suit.
The family is seeking $500,000 in damages from Read. The suit also argues that Read should be held financially responsible for O’Keefe’s next of kin, his 14-year-old niece, who lost “companionship, comfort … protection, care and counsel” with O’Keefe’s death. O’Keefe was acting as a surrogate mother to his niece at the time of his death and is one of the plaintiffs named in the suit.
Read had previously been charged with second-degree murder, manslaughter while under the influence of alcohol, and fleeing the scene causing bodily injury and death. She pleaded not guilty.
On July 1, a judge in Massachusetts declared the trial void because the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on all three counts. Read is scheduled to stand trial again on January 27, 2025.
What do the O’Keefes think happened?
In the civil suit, the family claims that in the months before O’Keefe’s death, Read “picked fights, was jealous, and had delusions about John’s infidelity.”
The O’Keefes agree with the prosecution’s argument that Read and O’Keefe were drunk and arguing after a night of drinking on the night of January 29, 2022, when she dropped him off at a friend’s house around midnight and then intentionally ran him over with her car before driving away.
Read “knew or had reason to know of the risk of serious injury or death to (John),” the O’Keefes said in the lawsuit. The family said O’Keefe’s “injuries or death resulted from defendant Read’s decision” to back into him.
The family also claimed that Read woke up O’Keefe’s 14-year-old niece, who lived in O’Keefe’s apartment, around 4:30 a.m. and “talked about hitting O’Keefe with her SUV.”
Yahoo News contacted two defense attorneys who represented Read in the criminal case, Martin Weinberg and David Yannetti. Weinberg’s law firm told Yahoo News that he is not involved in the civil suit. Yannetti could not immediately be reached for comment.
What is a wrongful death lawsuit?
A wrongful death lawsuit is a civil lawsuit, usually filed by surviving family members or a personal representative of the deceased’s estate, alleging that a person or business is liable for a death. It is usually brought when a criminal case has been unsuccessful.
Typically, a death is legally considered “wrongful” when the negligence of a person or company results in the death of another person. However, wrongful death lawsuits can also be filed in some murder and manslaughter cases. (OJ Simpson, for example, was found not guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, but was later ordered to pay $25 million in damages to the families of his alleged victims after a civil lawsuit.)
In Massachusetts, wrongful death cases have a statute of limitations that must be filed within three years of the event.
Although Read’s case involves criminal charges of murder and manslaughter, her family is allowed to sue her in a civil wrongful death suit for the same crime.
