WOODSTOCK — A Tunbridge couple face felony criminal charges after police say they hid four children — three of whom sustained serious injuries — from emergency medical responders after the pickup they were riding in crashed on a back road in South Royalton last month.
The couple also lied to police about who was driving the truck when it went off the road and “barrel roll[ed]” down an embankment on Happy Hollow Road, as well as the amount of alcohol they consumed prior to the incident, according to court records.
Brian Moore and Sierrah Carrasco, of Clarksville Road in Tunbridge, both pleaded not guilty at their arraignment in Windsor County Superior Court in Woodstock on Thursday afternoon.
Moore faces 11 charges, including multiple felony counts of reckless endangerment and cruelty to a child. Carrasco faces three charges, including a felony counts of obstruction of justice and accessory after the fact, plus a misdemeanor count of providing false information to police.
Moore, 36, and Carrasco, 28, were both at the scene of the pickup crash when police responded to a call at around 5 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 26, according to an affidavit in support of the charges provided by Vermont State Police Trooper Chayan Flores.
Carrasco initially told police that she had been driving the pickup from an address on Happy Hollow Road back to their home in Tunbridge when the truck caught the edge of roadway and flipped over.
She said there had been only one other occupant in the vehicle, Moore, who was in the passenger seat.
But Flores grew suspicious when he inspected the cab of the crashed pickup laying on its side and noticed the driver’s seat was pushed back further from the steering wheel than the passenger’s seat which was closer to the dashboard.
“This appeared inconsistent with the appearance of Moore’s and Carrasco’s height,” the Flores observed.
Asked if there were other passengers with them in the vehicle, Carrasco replied, “No,” and told the police that they had dropped off their kids at an address on Happy Hollow Road and were heading home when the crash occurred.
Moore also told police Carrasco had been at the wheel when the truck crashed. When challenged by the trooper about the difference in the positions of the seats relative to their respective sizes, Moore “denied any inconsistency,” the affidavit said.
But the trooper wrote that he subsequently learned from “dispatch” that a relative of four children, ages 15 and under, had reported to authorities that she was informed by the children they all had been passengers in a truck when it crashed.
The relative “indicated that no one, including Carrasco and Moore, had advised Fire/EMS that the children were in the vehicle and injured,” even while the couple was being treated at the scene by emergency medical personnel. The adults were uninjured.
Instead, the aunt took it upon herself later that evening to bring the children to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon for medical evaluation.
The aunt told police that she had learned from the children that one of them was sitting in the back of the truck’s cab in an unbuckled safety seat, while the other three children were riding in the truck’s bed when it crashed.
At the hospital, each of the children recounted separately to police that, contrary to what Carrasco and Moore had said, it was Moore who had been driving the truck and Carrasco who was in the passenger seat at the time of the crash.
Moreover, the children said, they had observed both the adults drinking multiple cans of beer earlier that day, which contradicted Moore and Carrasco’s statements to investigators.
When the crash happened, the three children in the bed of the truck were ejected, they told police.
One of the children said his head hit the ground and vomited. The second juvenile said his head hit the ground or interior of the truck. The third related that the truck rolled over his body and he blacked out.
Medical staff at DHMC determined that each of the children who had been in the bed of the truck sustained concussions from the crash.
The attending physician reported to police that the first juvenile was “suffering from a loss of feeling in a large part of his right leg” and a “possible complication with his spinal cord.”
The second juvenile told police that he had a pain to his hip, stomach, back and “two parts of his head,” while the third juvenile reported and described chest pain of four on a scale of one to 10, according to the affidavit.
The third juvenile further told police he recalled helping the fourth child, who had been in the unbuckled safety seat, out of the vehicle and Moore telling him “and the other kids to go to the nearby residence.”
After the crash, the third juvenile told police that he “observed/heard” Moore “instruct Carrasco to tell police that the kids were not involved in the crash,” the affidavit said.
At the end of Thursday’s arraignment — most of which was closed to the public because it involved details about the children — Judge Elizabeth Mann allowed both Moore and Carrasco to be released on conditions.
They are allowed to have contact with the children through supervised in-person and supervised telephone contact, and unsupervised electronic communication as long as it’s not through an application in which text messages disappear.
The current medical condition and custody of the children wasn’t available to the public on Thursday.