The ex-State Police captain trying to get a charge tossed in connection with a teen drowning in his backyard pool during a boozy high school grad party has lost his bid for dismissal.
James Coughlin and his wife, Leslie, hosted a graduation party at their Dedham home last June when 17-year-old Alonzo Polk drowned. The Coughlins are both facing two charges in connection to the incident: reckless endangerment of a child and furnishing alcohol to minors.
They have pleaded not guilty to both counts and have been seeking that the reckless endangerment charge gets tossed. On Wednesday, Dedham District Court Judge Michael Pomarole rejected their dismissal.
“After hearing and review of evidence admitted at the clerk’s hearing, motion denied,” Pomarole wrote in the ruling.
“The court finds that probable cause existed to issue the complaint on both counts,” the judge added.
The Polk family’s attorney, Greg Henning, said the family is “grateful for the court’s thorough review of the case.”
“Now they are focused on the next steps in the process to ensure that everyone responsible for Alonzo’s death is held accountable,” added Henning, of Henning Strategies.
The Coughlins’ defense attorney — Brian Kelly of Nixon Peabody LLP — last month filed a motion to dismiss, arguing that police had not established probable cause for the reckless endangerment charge.
Kelly on Thursday said he hadn’t seen the court’s ruling.
“Will decide next steps after we get a chance to review it,” the defense attorney added.
Kelly, in the motion to dismiss wrote, “The facts of this case revolve around an absolute tragedy — a young man ten days’ shy of his eighteenth birthday drowned at a high school graduation party hosted by the Defendants. But as the Supreme Judicial Court has made clear, the fact that a minor died in an accident does not mean that there is probable cause the defendants engaged in reckless or wonton conduct that endangered the life of a child.”
Ahead of a hearing last month, the Norfolk District Attorney’s Office reiterated in a court filing that there was probable cause to bring the charge.
“The evidence … shows that the defendants engaged in wanton and reckless conduct by consciously disregarding the substantial risks associated with furnishing alcohol to teenagers and leaving them unsupervised in and around a dark, poorly lit pool after midnight,” the prosecutors wrote in the filing.
“The defendants’ reckless conduct created a substantial risk of serious bodily injury to all teenagers present, including Alonzo Polk, who drowned shortly after midnight on June 6, 2021,” they added.
The pool area was very dimly lit and an underwater light did not appear to be working. Around midnight, Polk entered the pool and drowned. He died five days later at the hospital.
His blood alcohol concentration was less than 0.01% shortly after he arrived at the hospital. He had been drinking water throughout the party.
While Polk wasn’t intoxicated, the DA’s Office said the Coughlins’ “furnishment of alcohol directly contributed to the risk of substantial injury.”