A man has been arrested on child rape charges involving allegations that took place in Rutland, Massachusetts, over several years, police said Tuesday.
Shawn Baillargeon, a 54-year-old Rutland resident, was arrested Tuesday morning by state an…
Massachusetts
Rutland man arrested on child rape charges involving multiple victims, police say
‘Like Tom Hanks in Castaway’: Dave Portnoy describes harrowing ordeal aboard boat
Barstool Sports founder Dave Portnoy said he considers himself lucky to be alive after he found himself adrift on his boat with no power off Nantucket on Monday.
“I’m a relatively new boater,” Portnoy said in an interview with NBC10 Boston’s Colton Bradford on Tuesday. “I spent my summer’s hitting dingers, I wasn’t part of a yacht club. I’m a new boat guy — it was my third time out on a boat.”
Portnoy, 47, who posted a video to social media on Monday referring to himself as “Captain Dave,” said he still isn’t sure if he untethered his boat before trying to turn it on or if it broke free.
“Only God knows,” he said. “What I do know is I was no longer tethered to the buoy, and the boat was dead. I knew I was dead meat right then. The current was strong, probably a 20 mph wind on Nantucket, and I had no radio, I had no engine and I had no nothing. I was just floating off to sea, and I knew I was screwed.”
“I don’t want to say I stayed calm. The ocean doesn’t care how much money you have. It’ll drown you quick, it’ll humble you quick, so I was very nervous. I didn’t know what was going to happen.”
Portnoy said he considered jumping off the boat, but luckily he didn’t have to because he ran into a woman and a child on a small rowboat, who instantly recognized him.
“I was clearly at this point exasperated, sunburned — it was like Tom Hanks in ‘Castaway,’” he said.
The woman radioed in to the harbormaster, but the line was busy, so she called the Coast Guard, who arrived and rescued him.
“I owe her my life,” he said. “Without her I could still be halfway to St. Barts, who knows?”
Portnoy said he still doesn’t know who the woman was, calling her his “unknown hero for the night.”
He also praised the Coast Guard for their professionalism.
“Ten out of 10, nothing but pure class,” he said. “They gave me the tow, they didn’t make too much fun of me, said it can happen to anybody, even the most seasoned captain … They were super professional, great at their job, and I can’t thank them enough. Without them, maybe I get eaten by a shark, you just don’t know.”
Fortunately, Portnoy said his rescue dog Miss Peaches wasn’t with him on the boat.
“No, thank God,” he said. “No, that would’ve been … I don’t know what I would’ve done. I would’ve had to protect her with my life. At that point I was very nervous for my own life. I’m not ready for her to join me on my adventures quite yet. I gotta have total confidence.”
Portnoy also vowed to get back out on the water.
“Life knocks you down, you gotta get back up,” he said. “But you can’t take the ocean lightly. That would be my advice for wannabe captains.”
Karen Read’s lawyers keep up push for 2 charges to be dismissed
The latest update in the Karen Read legal saga was filed Tuesday, with the woman’s lawyers continuing to argue that two of the three charges against her in the death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe, should be dismissed.
Before detailing the several clear fallacies” in the prosecution’s argument against dismissing the charges, Read lawyer Martin Weinberg noted in the Norfolk Superior Court filing that their opposition didn’t dispute their claim that the jury was ready to unanimously find Read not guilty on the two charges in question.
It’s not immediately clear when the dispute may be resolved. The sides are due for a hearing next week, when the date of Read’s retrial is set.
The new dispute began last week, after Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial in the case. Read’s lawyers said the jury would have voted unanimously to find her not guilty on charges, including murder, citing the direct testimony of two jurors and what they’d heard from others on the thinking of two more jurors. They asked Cannone to dismiss both the charges, saying that re-trying her on them would amount to double jeopardy.
The Norfolk District Attorney’s Office opposed the motion, saying in a court filing Friday that the defense’s argument was “premised upon hearsay, conjecture, and legally inappropriate reliance as to the substance of jury deliberations.”
They also argued that “the jury’s communications to the court explicitly indicated an impasse on all charges,” and that Read’s lawyers had the chance before the mistrial was declared to ask that Cannone inquire what charge or charges the jury was deadlocked on, but didn’t take it.
In Tuesday’s filing, the defense said that they were not given the chance to be heard on a mistrial being declared — Cannone declared it without warning or soliciting objections, Weinberg writes.
“The record reflects no discussion of any such alternatives, including, importantly, inquiry regarding whether the jury had reached an impasse on all, as contrasted to just some of the counts,” he said.
Read was charged with murder in the second degree, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence of liquor and leaving a scene of personal injury and death. She pleaded not guilty, and a mistrial was declared last week after a long trial that attracted international attention. Her team claims she was framed for the killing.
Legal expert Peter Elikann, a criminal defense attorney in Massachusetts, said last week that if the jury did reach a verdict on two of the charges, it was unknown why they didn’t say so. He called the back-and-forth in legal filings “extremely unusual.”
“It would be interesting, at some point, if we could find out what went wrong here, why the jury, if this is true, did not understand that they could have made individual decisions on the individual counts, and it was not all or nothing,” Elikann said.
Crash deaths up 10% in New Hampshire compared to last year, officials say
New Hampshire public safety officials are reminding drivers to use caution on the roads after a tragic series of deadly crashes in recent days, and an overall increase in fatalities compared to last year.
The New Hampshire Office of Highway Sa…
