Police/Court
The legal saga of Alec Naiman, Jeffrey Willoughby and Jessica Willoughby vs. Cessna Aircraft Company ended abruptly this week, after the three 2005 plane crash victims accepted settlement offers.
A juror in the Cessna plane crash case said Thursday that the case was “a toss-up” and might have resulted in a verdict for either side had it not settled on the eve of jury deliberations.
The female Edgartown resident, who did not want to be identified by name, said the panel bonded during the monthlong trial but abided by the judge’s instructions to refrain from discussing the case or drawing any conclusions until all the evidence had been presented.
Testifying in a crowded makeshift courtroom Thursday, the pilot in a 2005 plane crash at Katama airfield gave his account of the accident that left him confined to a wheelchair without the use of his legs.
“I remember at first my morale was very high,” Alec Naiman — who is deaf and was communicating through a sign-language interpreter — said of his subsequent hospitalization. “I was teasing everybody and flirting with all the nurses.”
With prescription drug abuse increasing on Martha’s Vineyard, some Islanders are calling for a new course of action: awareness about the problem.
“One of the things we have to address is the use of prescription drugs,” said Tom Bennett, senior clinical advisor with the Island Counseling Center at Martha’s Vineyard Community Services. “It will take a whole community effort to address this issue.”
A Maryland man who authorities said unleashed a string of racial slurs and water from a garden hose at a Vineyard taxi driver has been placed on 18 months probation and ordered to write a letter of apology.
Duane B. Dillard, 70, of Hagerstown, Md., on Feb. 2 admitted to sufficient facts on a charge of assault and battery to intimidate, and the case was continued without a finding in Edgartown district court.
A Vineyard Haven man who has worked as an assistant boys’ basketball coach at the Edgartown School and volunteered at Martha’s Vineyard Boys’ and Girls’ Club was arraigned Thursday on charges of sexually assaulting a seven-year-old boy.
School officials said the alleged victim is not a student at the school, but Daniel P. Parker’s arrest by Tisbury police on Wednesday prompted the Vineyard schools superintendent to bar him from all Island schools.