FARMINGTON – A Franklin County justice found a Massachusetts man guilty Friday of leaving the scene of an accident that killed one man and injured a woman and her daughter last year on Route 27 in New Vineyard.

Domingos Medeiros, 49, of Assonet, faces up to five years in prison on the charge. Justice Michaela Murphy said the sentencing hearing may be held June 16.

Medeiros was hauling 17-foot beams to his Hard Pine Inc. business in Fall River, Mass., from a job in Kingfield on Jan. 16, 2008. More than a ton of lumber fell out of his trailer, some of it striking two cars.

About a half-dozen of the 6-inch by 12-inch beams went through the windshield of a car, killing the driver, Stephen McKenney, 55, of New Portland.

The wood struck the front of another car, which was following McKenney’s. The driver and passenger of the other car, Katherine Jones of Camden and her daughter, received minor injuries.

“I am pleased with the verdict,” McKenney’s sister, Charlotte Bourgault, said from her home in Biddeford. “I never believed he was innocent. I never believed the wood could fall off his trailer and he didn’t know it.”

Medeiros testified during a bench trial in February that he couldn’t explain how he didn’t know he had lost the load of beams, offering that it might have fallen into the snow and he didn’t hear it. He said he had tied the load down securely.

A state police accident reconstructionist testified at the trial that he found marks in the road where beams struck the pavement at the scene south of Basin Road. He also found a strap in the road.

Medeiros continued to the former Log Cabin Restaurant on Route 4 in Farmington, where he noticed his load was missing. He said he tried to return to find the lumber but he couldn’t get through because it was blocked due a multi-vehicle accident. He said he didn’t push to see police because he knew they were busy.

Medeiros said he was sure the wood was not involved in the accident. If it was, he would have seen it in the road, he said.

After learning the next morning that the beams were involved, Medeiros said he wanted to return to Maine with the truck and meet with police but was advised not to by his lawyer in Massachusetts.

He turned himself in to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department seven days later.

Justice Murphy said Friday that the state had proved the charge of leaving the scene of a personal injury or death accident beyond a reasonable doubt. She said she found some of Medeiros’ statements during the trial not credible and contradictory to the safety measures he said he had taken with the load.

Bourgault said her brother was a quiet man who loved his animals.

“He had four cats that he treated like children,” Bourgault said.

Her brother had been a volunteer for Community Concepts Inc., driving people to appointments, and had been looking forward to getting to know his nieces and nephews better, she said.

“I miss him every day,” she said.