"After hearing about the 8-year-old boy in Adams who was stuck and killed in a 35 mph zone this week, it really drives home just how much difference a little bit of speed can make when it comes to hitting a child or pedestrian. Most of the cars racing by my house right now are going really, really fast.”
-- Dana Coleman of Great Barrington, who lives on Taconic Avenue
“It’s Housy and it’s not supposed to happen here. People are disturbed.”
-- Joe Aberdale, whose parents started Aberdale’s in a nearby building in 1961
The event was determined to be an isolated matter and was no threat to the general public, but police requested that anyone with information about the incident call the Sheffield Police Department at 413-229-8522.
It is a particularly nasty stretch. There are several intersections, so amid speeding cars are those that also slow down to make turns onto streets or into driveways. It is a hair-raising area in which to be on foot due to both high speeds and low visibility from a curve to the north — just before the Castle Street intersection -- that often features cars barreling down the hill from Alford Road, making crossing the street dangerous.
“They had been at a bar in Lee and hanging out in town,” Great Barrington Police Office Timothy Ullrich wrote of the driver, Kyle Bailey’s, response. And when Ullrich asked him how much he had had to drink, Bailey was reported to have said, “obviously too much.”
Garrett J. Norton, 21, was extricated from the car by the Great Barrington Fire Department and died of his injuries a short time later at Fairview Hospital, according to police.
Magadini, 69, has adopted a homeless condition of living. He was convicted on September 29 for seven violations over the previous year in Great Barrington that occurred during the cold months, and for which he received a 30-day jail sentence that was set to begin on January 5.
Based on the preliminary investigation, the female was traveling at a moderate rate of speed when she failed to negotiate a corner, causing her to strike the tree head on.
Winters told police that before the accident, he had been on his way to an AA (Alcoholics Anonymous) meeting. He said he last remembered passing the town police station on Route 7, before waking up with his airbag inflated, realizing he had just had an accident.
A little more than an hour after the hit and run, the driver, Dylan Winters of Canaan, Conn., turned himself in. He walked into the Great Barrington Police Station, and told police he left his car at the Sheffield Pottery.
