A Brockton couple was sitting at a stoplight late at night with their baby boy in the backseat when an SUV suddenly smashed into them. Behind the wheel of the vehicle that hit them? An off-duty Brockton police sergeant.
It was after midnight on May 19 and Damian Dorsey’s shift at his warehouse job in Mansfield, Massachusetts, had just ended.
His fiancée, Jessica Nash, picked him up and headed home to their apartment in Brockton. In the backseat, the couple’s 5-month-old baby boy, Beckham, rode along for the late-night routine.
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Dorsey recalled how few drivers were on the road at that hour.
“It was a complete ghost town at that time,” he said.
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A little past 1 a.m., the family came to a stop at a red light along Belmont Street in Brockton.
Surveillance video obtained by the NBC10 Investigators shows what happened next: A Dodge SUV approached the intersection and never appeared to slow down before it smashed into back of the family’s Jeep Cherokee.
“It sounded like a bomb had gone off in our car,” Dorsey said. “The crash was so bad that the headrests came out of the seats. It gives me the chills.”
Investigations
The couple’s attention quickly turned to Beckham, who was crying in his car seat. Thankfully, it appeared that he’d avoided any serious injuries.
“I was panicking about my son,” Dorsey said. “The trunk was almost in the back seat.”
According to the crash report, the force of the collision pushed the family’s vehicle forward about 300 feet through the intersection.
Before an ambulance took them to Good Samaritan Hospital, Dorsey said several witnesses came to check on their condition. He remembers some of them shouting in the road.
“They were outraged about the other driver,” Dorsey said. “They started shouting that he was under the influence of alcohol.”
After being treated at the hospital, Dorsey later got a copy of the crash report from the Brockton Police Department.
He quickly noticed the report said no witnesses at the scene provided a statement to police and the other driver had only received a minor citation for a crash that had totaled both vehicles.
The report also said no field sobriety test was conducted.
Growing suspicious, Dorsey looked up the other driver, Stanley David, and discovered he was a sergeant with Brockton police.
According to the report, David told officers at the scene he “may have dozed off momentarily” behind the wheel before the crash.
“I was angry,” Dorsey said. “Had this been any other citizen, they would have been sobriety tested. Just because you have a badge, it doesn’t mean you should be treated differently than anybody else.”
Criminal defense attorney Patrick Donovan, who is not connected to the case, reviewed the crash report and other details gathered by the NBC10 Investigators.
Donovan expressed concern about conflict of interest and Brockton police officers on the scene investigating one of their own.
“In a situation like this, the first move should be to reach out to the higher-ups and bring in somebody from another department,” Donovan said. “They should have done that immediately. That should be part of the standard operating procedure.”
A spokesperson with the Brockton Police Department said that an internal affairs investigation into the incident is almost finished and no details would be released prior to that report’s completion.
Police did not respond to our questions about what triggered the internal investigation or whether Sgt. David remained on active duty or administrative leave during the probe. They also did not answer a question about whether the department has a policy about referring incidents involving their officers to outside agencies to avoid a conflict of interest.
We contacted David to ask about the crash, but the police sergeant did not respond to our inquiry.
It is not the first crash involving a Brockton police officer that raised transparency questions in recent years.
The police chief caused a serious three-car wreck in May 2021, but the incident flew under the radar until the NBC10 Investigators uncovered it.
Emanuel Gomes, who has since retired from the department, was eventually charged with negligent driving and his case was resolved last month.
Meantime, Dorsey said his injuries from the crash last May are still preventing him from returning to the physical demands of his warehouse job.
While he and his fiancée were initially hesitant to speak publicly about the ordeal, they are now sharing their story in hopes it will lead to some answers.
“We kind of feel like they’re pushing the process off longer and longer,” Dorsey said. “I’m going to go to the furthest extent that I can to make sure justice is served.”
Ryan Kath can be reached at ryan.kath@nbcuni.com. You can follow him on Twitter, Instagram or connect on Facebook.
