A Nashua police officer makes his way through debris while examining the wreckage of a Nissan Altima that landed next to a small pond following an early-morning high-speed crash Monday that claimed the life of a Manchester woman.
A Nashua police officer makes his way through debris while examining the wreckage of a Nissan Altima that landed next to a small pond following an early-morning high-speed crash Monday that claimed the life of a Manchester woman.
NASHUA — A series of events that police say began when officers responded to the Residence Inn at Marriott Nashua for a report of an assault involving a knife ended a few minutes later when a vehicle fleeing the hotel at “a high rate of speed” crashed nearby, claiming the life of the passenger and leaving the driver in critical condition.
Passenger Brandee LaBarge, 23, of Manchester, was pronounced dead at a local hospital.
The driver, Kyle Freeman, 23, of Merrimack, was transported to a local hospital with serious injuries. He was later flown to a Boston hospital, for treatment of what police called life-threatening injuries.
According to Nashua Police Public Information Officer Sgt. John Cinelli, arriving officers were approaching the hotel at about 1:40 a.m. with their emergency lights and sirens activated when they spotted a black Nissan Altima on Somerset Parkway traveling on the wrong side of the road and coming at the cruisers.
Just before the Altima crashed, Cinelli said, the driver crossed over the median on Somerset Parkway to avoid an oncoming cruiser, then “began to accelerate at an extremely high rate of speed.”
As officers reversed their direction to try and stop the vehicle, the driver turned off the lights and “accelerated well past them,” Cinelli said.
Moments later, the officers heard a loud crash near the intersection of Somerset Parkway and Amherst Street, Cinelli said.
There, they found the Altima on its roof, pitched at an angle on the shore of a small pond in front of 402 Amherst St., one of several office buildings near the Birch Pond Office Park.
Both occupants were ejected from the vehicle.
Police and firefighters searched the pond and its surroundings to make sure no one else had been in the car and may have also been ejected.
A crash reconstruction team worked through the rest of the morning collecting and documenting evidence and taking photos and measurements of the scene.
A tow truck arrived around 11 a.m. to remove the vehicle.
Police ask anyone who may have witnessed the incident or has any security video that may have captured images to contact the department’s Crime Line at 589-1665.
