PARIS — A woman who fell asleep at the wheel, setting in motion a crash in West Paris that killed a Naples man in 2009, said in Oxford County Superior Court on Tuesday that she did not cause the crash.

Tricia Beretz, 38, of Somerville, Mass., is a co-defendant in a civil lawsuit brought on behalf of the family of Richard Ray, 60, who was killed in the accident on Route 26. The other defendant is Midwest Price Co. of West Paris, owner of the tractor-trailer involved in the crash.

Beretz, a self-employed acupuncturist, said she had taken a day trip skiing at Sunday River on Nov. 23, 2009, because she had the day off and it was just a few days before her birthday. She said she left the mountain at around 4 p.m. and began feeling tired as she drove through West Paris. She said she was planning to stop at a gas station for fuel and coffee.

She said she then fell asleep “for a split second.”

“I must have dozed off, and when I came to I saw headlights in front of me.” She said she was terrified and swerved back into her lane.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that was really close,’” she said. That’s when her car was knocked into a field.

Other drivers stopped and ran up to her car to see if she was OK. She was so dazed, she said, that when two people from Midwest Price came to check on her, she tried to hand them her license and registration.

Beretz cried as she recounted hearing that the driver of a pickup truck might be dead.

In 2010, she pleaded guilty to a civil violation. Her license was suspended for 90 days and she performed 200 hours of community service at her local Boys and Girls Club.

During cross examination by Midwest Price’s attorney, Cathy Roberts, Beretz admitted again to crossing the centerline but stopped short of agreeing that she caused the crash. She said she believed a series of events caused the crash.

Officials reported Beretz was headed south ahead of Ray when she fell asleep, drifted into the northbound lane and faced the oncoming tractor-trailer driven by Warren Dunning of Dixfield. She moved back to her lane as Dunning veered left to avoid hitting her head-on.

The left side of her car caught the left-front corner of the loaded wood chip truck and the impact knocked her Acura into a field. The truck’s steering was disabled, causing the truck to pull hard to the left and into the path of Ray’s pickup and then rolled onto it, according to officials.

The attorney for Ray’s family, Benjamin Gideon, argued last week with the help of several witnesses that the tractor-trailer’s out-of-adjustments brakes and Dunning’s reaction helped lead to the crash and helped cause the tractor-trailer to roll over onto Ray’s truck.

A medical examiner last week said he believed it was the tractor-trailer rolling onto the pickup that killed Ray, not the initial impact between the two trucks.

On Tuesday, an expert witness retained by Midwest Price’s defense team testified. Dennis Guenther, a mechanical engineer for the firm Scientific Expert Analysis explained his accident reconstruction work, which refuted testimony by an expert brought by the family’s attorney last week.

According to Guenther’s analysis, the truck was moving at only 14 mph when it rolled. An expert last week said the truck would have had to be moving at 29 mph or more to roll. Guenther said knowing that exact figure would require too much speculation about the truck’s center of gravity and other variables.

He said the front of the truck went off the road and dragged through deep soil, which had the effect of slowing the bottom of the truck while the top kept moving, toppling it onto the pickup.

Richard Ray’s former girlfriend, who was dating him at the time of his death and who is representing the family as the plaintiff, also spoke Tuesday. Lavaughn Purington of Scarborough said she and Ray spent every weekend together. She said he loved his children and saw them often.

She is seeking damages from Midwest Price and Beretz, with any money awarded going to Ray’s five adult children.

[email protected]