AUBURN — A Leeds man appeared in court Tuesday on a felony charge of elevated aggravated assault in connection with a hit and run that left a Turner man in critical condition earlier this month.

Donald White, 30, of 113 Anson Road turned himself in to authorities and was held at Androscoggin County Jail in lieu of $100,000 cash bail or $250,000 surety. He told a judge at Androscoggin County Superior Court that he understood the charges against him, including violation of condition of release, a misdemeanor.

Police said White and a Leeds woman drove to her home in a borrowed pickup truck on Sept. 6, the woman told Matt Griffin, a Maine State Police detective. She and her sometime boyfriend, Jason Gagnon, 31, of Turner, had argued earlier in the evening, she said. He accused her of cheating on him with White. Gagnon had hit and slapped her as she drove him from Turner to Leeds in her car, she told Griffin. Later, Gagnon drove off in her car, leaving her behind.

She called White, who came to pick her up in a friend’s full-size pickup truck. The two drove down the road and White spotted Gagnon parked at a nearby store in his girlfriend’s car. White told Gagnon to drive her car to her home. When she and White arrived at her home, White and Gagnon started fighting. After the two wrestled, White got back into the pickup truck; Gagnon’s girlfriend was in the passenger’s seat.

Gagnon walked around the front of the truck toward the passenger side, yelling at his girlfriend that she was not going to leave with White. Then White leaned out of the driver’s side window and asked Gagnon what he was doing. In response, Gagnon turned back in front of the truck in the direction of the driver’s side, Griffin wrote in his arrest warrant affidavit.

White put the truck in gear and began to accelerate, the woman told Griffin. She was looking down at the time. After the truck moved forward, the woman said she “felt an impact,” then White said, “Oh s–t!” After looking behind him, White told her he hit or ran over Gagnon, according to the woman.

After backing up the truck, White got out and went to Gagnon, who was lying on the ground. White said to Gagnon’s girlfriend, “He’s alright. Let’s pick him up.” But Gagnon said: “Don’t touch me!” He said: “I am going to walk home.”

White started to pick up Gagnon, but the woman became upset because Gagnon’s injuries looked severe, she told police. She told White that someone needed to call 911. “I am not calling 911. You can. I gotta get out of here,” White told the woman, according to Griffin’s affidavit. As she called 911, White fled the scene. She told police that she didn’t think White had intended to run over Gagnon.

A doctor at Central Maine Medical Center in Lewiston, who treated Gagnon in the hospital’s intensive care unit, said his injuries were “consistent with having an extremely heavy object, in this case a truck tire, crush his sternum into his backbone causing severe injuries to his internal organs, including his heart and lungs.” A LifeFlight nurse told police a tire tread impression could be seen on Gagnon’s body.

Police inspected tire tracks left at the scene where Gagnon was injured and found they were similar to treads of tires of a truck that belonged to George Fortin of Greene, owner of a white GMC truck. Fortin said White had borrowed his truck on Sept. 6. Police said they observed three “finger-type” streaks down the front bumper on the driver’s side that might appear from “someone’s fingers reaching out to grab or hold onto the truck while being run over.”   

White was indicted in June on charges of kidnapping, robbery, theft by
unauthorized taking, assault and terrorizing in connection to an
unrelated incident on March 25.