A Vermont man pleaded guilty Monday to three charges including manslaughter in the death of his 2-year-old son, who police say fell into a fast-moving stream as his father fled the scene of a car crash in Massachusetts last April.
Darel Galorenzo, …
Massachusetts
Will protest votes over Israel-Hamas War dent Biden’s win in Mass. primary?
Advocates pushing for the U.S. to throw more support behind Palestinians in the Israel-Hamas War are pushing for Massachusetts voters to show their displeasure with the Biden administration at the ballot box on Tuesday.
The movement is urging Democ…
Medway home where 7 children were removed was scene of bloody fight between family members
A violent encounter between a father and son preceded the removal of multiple children from a Medway, Massachusetts, home last month, according to documents obtained by the NBC10 Boston Investigators.
As we reported on February 23, social workers removed seven children between the ages of 3 and 16 from a home on Holliston Street and police spent the day gathering evidence.
Medway Police Chief William Kingsbury told reporters that day he could not share specific details about the situation while it remained under investigation.
However, court records the NBC10 Investigators reviewed shed light on a tumultuous environment in the days leading up to the removal of the children.
According to a Medway police report, officers responded to the home on the night of February 16 and found the aftermath of a bloody encounter between Thomas Logan, 55, and his 27-year-old son, Matthew Logan.
Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan was watching television in the home with his girlfriend and 29-year-old brother when his father entered the room with a metal flashlight and tried to attack his son.
After Matthew Logan fought off his father, Thomas Logan allegedly returned from the kitchen holding two knives.
Witnesses told police Matthew Logan wrestled the knives away from his father and then started punching him repeatedly in the head. At one point, Thomas Logan’s wife tried to intervene and break up the fight, but was also struck in the face during the struggle, according to the report.
Police arrived at the chaotic scene, unsure of what was transpiring inside the home after the frantic 911 call placed by Matthew Logan’s girlfriend, who was holding the couple’s young child when officers got to the home.
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 1-800-799-SAFE (7233), visiting www.thehotline.org or texting LOVEIS to 22522.
One officer reported scaling an elevated patio and arresting Matthew Logan. Another officer kicked in a door and found Thomas Logan bleeding extensively from the head.
Witnesses told police that Matthew Logan had a tattoo on his face of his deceased brother’s birthday, which seemed to spark the anger from Thomas Logan.
In a video posted on Facebook the day after the altercation, Matthew Logan corroborated that detail and described the fight with his father.
“My dad tried to assault me in front of my woman and my baby,” Matthew Logan said in the video. “He tried to assault me with a flashlight and I just decked the (expletive) out of him and he was instantly bleeding.”
According to the report, 12 people live at the home on Holliston Street and many of the children were sleeping in their rooms when the violent struggle erupted.
The father and son were each charged with felony counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon. Matthew Logan was wearing two large gold rings on his hand during the fight, which contributed to his father’s injuries, according to the report.
Matthew Logan was arraigned on February 20 and released on $540 bail with an order not to contact his parents. Thomas Logan was treated at the hospital after the fight and will be arraigned on March 28.
A source familiar with the case told NBC10 that the removal of children was not directly related to the fight on February 16, but instead allegations that surfaced during an investigation following that incident.
On February 26, Julie Logan sought a restraining order against her son, Matthew. In her affidavit, the mother wrote that her son struggled with several mental health disorders and had not been taking his prescribed medication.
Julie Logan also said her son had a history of drug and alcohol abuse, and his mental state had declined in recent weeks. The mother said she feared for her safety.
“My son recently assaulted my husband leaving him unconscious in a pool of blood,” Julie Logan wrote. “Given his diagnosis and the seriousness of it, there’s not a way of predicting his unstable behavior.”
NBC10 reached out to the parents, Thomas and Julie, to ask about the altercation or any perspective they could provide about the ongoing law enforcement investigation. They have not responded to messages left at the phone numbers listed in police reports.
When reached by phone, Matthew Logan declined to comment.
In their summary of the fight on February 16, police officers indicated they were familiar with the family and had been to the address on multiple occasions for medical emergencies, noise complaints, and an assault on a family member.
According to calls for service to the home on Holliston Street, police have been to the home more than a dozen times since the family purchased it in 2016.
In one report from February 2019, Thomas Logan called police and said “he just saw five lights go over his house but could not hear any sounds.” An officer who responded to the house said Logan showed him a video taken on his cellphone.
In another report from May 2020, a caller told police that Thomas Logan was standing outside his house shouting obscenities at people. Records show that Logan also called police in June 2022 to report a neighbor who had taken a photo of his trash sitting out by the curb.
On Monday, Chief Kingsbury told NBC10 the situation remains under investigation and there were no new details he could share with the public.
A spokesperson for DCF said the agency could not comment because of state and federal privacy requirements.
More from the NBC10 Boston Investigators
How Massachusetts’ independent voters could impact primaries
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling that restored former President Donald Trump’s name to the Colorado ballot makes it “all the more important” for voters to express their opinions in presidential primaries, Massachusetts’ elections chief said Monday.
Citing “significant” early voting numbers, Secretary William Galvin said his prognostication for “a reasonably good turnout” on Tuesday in the Massachusetts primaries could be “enhanced a little more” by the court’s Monday morning ruling.
More than 50,000 Bay Staters have already cast ballots in person, and more than 400,000 have voted by mail in advance of Super Tuesday.
Galvin said he expects to see more than 600,000 Democratic primary ballots cast by Tuesday’s end, and said GOP ballots will “surely exceed 400,000 tomorrow.”
“This morning’s decision makes it all the more important that those voters who have opinions on the presidency take the opportunity to express them, because clearly what the court said today was that they will not do anything to decide the outcome of the presidential election. They’ve left it up to the voters and ultimately to Congress on the issue of the enforcement of the 14th Amendment,” the Brighton Democrat told reporters.
The state record for turnout in a Republican presidential primary was set in 2016, when 637,703 voters cast a GOP ballot.
Party enrollment continues to dwindle, while the rising ranks of unenrolled or “independent” voters are able to choose on Election Day which ballot they want to pull, and Galvin said independents “can really swing an election.”
Comparatively “fewer” party changes in this calendar year have included more than 13,000 “Democrats going independent” since Jan. 1, the secretary said. Those former Democrats would now be free to pull a Republican primary ballot.
“That could be a factor in tomorrow’s voting,” Galvin said. He added, “I had to assume eight years ago that when I saw Democrats going Republican that they were doing it for Trump, because he was the candidate with momentum eight years ago in the primary, and he was. I mean, clearly — I guess the one common theme between 2016, 2020, and 2024 is Donald Trump. It’s a factor. However you want to play it, or however you want to observe it.”
The U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. Anderson found that enforcement “against federal officeholders and candidates” of Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — known as the insurrection clause — “rests with Congress and not the States.”
The Reconstruction-era Constitutional amendment includes a prohibition on certain previous officeholders who “have engaged in insurrection” subsequently holding “any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State.”
Citing that clause, challenges to Trump’s ballot access have been launched in multiple states. In Massachusetts, a challenge was dismissed by the Ballot Law Commission whose decision was upheld by Supreme Judicial Court Justice Frank Gaziano in January.
The U.S. Supreme Court wrote Monday, “Conflicting state outcomes concerning the same candidate could result not just from differing views of the merits, but from variations in state law governing the proceedings that are necessary to make Section 3 disqualification determinations. Some States might allow a Section 3 challenge to succeed based on a preponderance of the evidence, while others might require a heightened showing.”
The result could be a “patchwork” of state enforcement, the ruling said, and “[n]othing in the Constitution requires that we endure such chaos — arriving at any time or different times, up to and perhaps beyond the Inauguration.”
Galvin opined that the high court “deliberately” reported its unanimous opinion before Super Tuesday, when 15 states decide their convention delegates. The secretary’s traditional pre-primary press conference was already scheduled for Monday morning, around half an hour after the ruling began to hit national headlines.
“They did not take the bench to issue it, they issued before 10 o’clock this morning — so that all the voters who are voting tomorrow, and all the voters who are going to be voting over the next few months, know what the rules are, know what the impact of the 14th Amendment is, and know who’s responsible to enforce it, which they say is the Congress, that’s the majority,” Galvin said.
Galvin had already read the ruling by his 10:30 a.m. press conference and underscored that it was a unanimous decision of the nine justices.
But he added that a difference in the concurring opinions was whether the court should have gone so far as to say “only an act of Congress” could enforce the 14th Amendment.
“And as the three concurring justices said, they didn’t think that was necessary to go to that step at this point. And they in fact … suggested the majority was insulating the court from further action on the issue of the insurrection clause even after the election, that it would leave it up to the Congress. … It also says to the voters that if you really are that concerned about the insurrection clause, and they should perhaps be, it’s up to them, that you need to affect the election of members of Congress.”
Attorney Marc Salinas, whom the state Republican Party had hired to defend placing Trump on the Bay State primary ballot, said in a statement that the push to remove Trump from primary ballots was “purely politically motivated.”
“When you take politics out of the analysis this was the only correct result. That’s why we saw a unanimous decision from the Court,” Salinas said Monday.
“This ruling is a victory for our democracy and the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” the MassGOP said in an email blast. “Citizens have the right to vote for whomever they feel most confident in representing them, and the Supreme Court’s decision reaffirms this fundamental right.”
Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday.
In a few communities, local matters will also be decided Tuesday.
Republican John Marsi is unopposed in a Central Mass. special election to fill a vacant House seat that represents Dudley, Southbridge, and parts of Spencer and Charlton. And six towns are also holding concurrent municipal elections with separate ballots: Dover, Lexington, Plainfield, Reading, South Hadley, and Wellesley.
Any voters still holding onto a mail-in primary ballot should not drop it in the mail, Galvin said. At this point, it should be dropped off in person in order to arrive before Tuesday’s end and be counted.
“The opportunity is there for everyone to participate,” he said.
More ice cream, less hot dogs: This week’s restaurant news for Greater Boston
[This story first appeared on Boston Restaurant Talk.]
Below are some of the biggest restaurant and food-related news stories that have been posted between February 26 and March 3.
Van Leeuwen Ice Cream to Open Locations in Boston, Cambridge…
Massachusetts’ largest biotech employer extends Kendall Square lease
Takeda Pharmaceuticals Inc. has agreed to extend its lease at a building in the heart of Cambridge’s Kendall Square through 2040.
The life sciences giant decided to renew early on 222,925 square feet at 75/125 Binney St., according to a statement …
