Two moms appeared before a judge in Waterbury Superior Court on Tuesday, accused of packing eight children into a vehicle fit for five that later crashed.
Wolcott police said Jamie Madore was behind the wheel of a Ford Focus that was traveling north on Woodtick Road around 7:30 p.m. on Aug. 18. Elezebeth Farina was in the passenger seat.
Witnesses told police Madore swerved over the double yellow line to pass another vehicle and lost control.
“She was definitely doing minimum of 50 mph. She pulled out to pass another car and cut back in, that’s what caused her to lose control of the car and go off the road and flip it,” Wolcott Police Chief Edward Stephens said.
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Eight children were in the vehicle with the women. Six of the children belong to Farina, and two to Madore. According to an arrest warrant, four children were in the backseat, two of them sharing one seat and four children were in the hatch, where there are no seatbelts.
Police say one of the children in the hatch, a 10-year-old boy, was thrown from the vehicle and landed underneath the car. He was seriously injured and spent 10 days in the hospital, four of those days in the Intensive Care Unit. The other children had bumps and bruises, according to the warrant.
“If it was about four feet over to the left, they would have hit a telephone pole head-on,” Edwards said.
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Good Samaritans pulled over when they saw the crash, and helped the occupants out of the car. Officers said they arrived to find the eight children on the side of the road covered in what appeared to be blood and mud.
“I mean, it was tragic when you see something like that, especially with young kids inside of it. We see accidents a lot with adults, but this many kids in one accident, it was a lot,” Edwards said.
Police said Madore was coming from Farina’s home in Waterbury and was driving to her Bristol home to tend to her cats. Farina told officers that Madore pressured her to go with her.
“The driver wanted to get back to Bristol, an issue with her cat or her kitty litter,” Edwards said. “It’s a decision the mothers made that could have cost lives. Very, very serious. To throw kids in a car and not have a seatbelt, it’s terrible.”
Madore, who’s out on a $50,000 bond, is facing a slew of charges including failing to use a seatbelt on a child and reckless driving. Farina, who’s out on a $20,000 bond, is facing five counts of risk of injury to a minor.
Both cases were continued to January, and Madore’s case is being screened for potential movement to Part A Court for more serious offenses.
