PORTLAND – A truck driver involved in a fatal collision in Hallowell had 42 convictions for driving offenses and had his license suspended 19 times, according to Doug Dunbar of the secretary of state’s office.
He was also involved in another fatal crash 11 years ago for which he received a suspended jail sentence.
Scott Hewitt, 32, of Presque Isle, was wanted for warrants for criminal violations of trucking rules and had a suspended license at the time of last Friday’s crash, which killed Tina Turcotte, 40, of Scarborough.
When Hewitt’s tractor-trailer slammed into Hewitt’s car around 9 a.m., one lane of the Maine Turnpike in Hallowell was closed for construction. Turcotte was allowing a truck in front of her into the open lane when Hewitt’s truck cab smashed into and ran over Turcotte’s car. The impact crushed her 2001 Infiniti, reducing it to a pile of junk.
After Friday’s crash, Hewitt was arrested on two outstanding warrants that resulted from his arrest a year ago, when he was accused of falsifying his logbook and removing a sticker from his truck that designated it as being out of service. The warrants were issued when he failed to appear in court in April for a plea hearing.
No charges have yet been filed in connection with Friday’s crash, police said. State police are investigating the crash, and will turn over their report to Kennebec County District Attorney Evert Fowle, Maine State Police spokesman Stephen McCausland said. Fowle said his office is overseeing the investigation to determine what criminal charges Hewitt might face.
Hewitt, who owns Hewitt Transportation in Caribou, was released on $1,000 bail.
The chief of the Maine State Police, Craig Poulin, told Maine Public Radio on Wednesday that Hewitt had been stopped in New York the day before the crash because of logbook and trailer-lighting violations. It was unclear why Hewitt was not taken off the road, since there was a warrant out for his arrest, and his license was not current.
Records also show that his privilege to drive commercial vehicles was suspended June 20 by the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, because he was found to be an unfit motor carrier. That suspension came more than a month before the Hallowell crash.
Alan Harding, Hewitt’s lawyer in the 2004 logbook violations case, described him as “a young truck driver with a family” who was under financial pressure to work more often than he should.
“If he has a fault, it is accepting dispatches that in retrospect he would have been better off not taking,” Harding said. “The pressure to take loads and go on trips is tremendous.”
Harding said Hewitt had agreed to plead guilty to the 2004 allegations, and his failure to appear in a Portland courtroom had been a misunderstanding.
Hewitt’s driving convictions included two for driving to endanger, and he was involved in four accidents before the one in Hallowell, according to the secretary of state’s office.
One of those involved the death of another motorist. Hewitt was driving a truck loaded with junk cars that tipped over in South Berwick on Nov. 4, 1994, trapping Scott Davis, 25, in his car as the wreckage burned, Harding confirmed.
The case was resolved in 1997 when Hewitt pleaded guilty to driving an unsafe and improperly loaded motor vehicle, failing to inspect a vehicle and falsifying duty records. He received a six-month suspended sentence and one year of probation.
Harding said the 1994 crash didn’t make Hewitt an unsafe driver.
“There are accidents, and trucks are on the road and trucks have drivers,” he said. “The mere fact that one is involved in a collision is not an indictment.”
But Hewitt’s record is not typical for a truck driver in Maine, said Dale Hanington, president of the Maine Motor Transport Association, a trade group for the trucking industry.
Hanington said most good truckers will go a career without getting in as many accidents as Hewitt has in the last 11 years.
Turcotte’s family declined to be interviewed for this story.
According to her obituary, she worked as a self-employed accountant. She survived breast cancer in 2000, loved animals and was an advocate for animal rights.
Fowle said the initial focus of the investigation will be the truck Hewitt was driving and the circumstances of the crash that killed Turcotte. Later, he said, prosecutors will look at Hewitt’s driving record to determine how to proceed.
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