Reports shed light on investigation into crash that killed local educator
Los Alamos police officers responding to the intersection of North Road and Urban Street on a Sunday morning in mid-March found 68-year-old Brian Easton lying in the roadway and a man in his thirties beside him trying to help. Easton had been struck by a pickup as it made a turn from North onto Urban, according to Los Alamos Police Department incident reports.
Witnesses told police that the man assisting Easton as he lay in the road was the driver of the truck that hit him and that he immediately climbed out of his vehicle and ran to Easton. The man, according to incident reports, wore a hat with a “medic” symbol on it and later identified himself to police as a paramedic.
The crash happened just after 11 am on March 15. Soon after, Easton was transported to the Los Alamos Medical Center and later airlifted to the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque in critical condition. Unfortunately, he died at that hospital on March 17.
The driver, who is not facing charges at this time and therefore Boomtown is not naming, remained at the scene and told crash investigators that he did not see Easton in the crosswalk as he turned onto eastbound Urban because he blended in with the landscaping in front of the park at the intersection, according to the incident reports obtained by Boomtown through a public records request. The driver also said he’d come to a complete stop before turning.
As part of the investigation, two officers from the LAPD crash investigations team later recreated the crash “multiple times,” with one officer driving a vehicle on North and then turning onto Urban as another officer crossed the road using the crosswalk.
“Though cars, people, heights, views while driving a car, etc. are different, the reenactment showed it was possible for me to completely lose sight of [the other officer] while she was in the crosswalk,” an officer wrote in one incident report.
As part of the investigation, LAPD officers collected the driver’s cellphone while he was at the scene of the crash, and police filed for a warrant to search the phone’s data, specifically data from 10:45 am to noon on March 15, according to the application for the warrant filed in Los Alamos District Court on March 17.
LAPD investigators on March 17 attempted to access the phone’s data using a Cellebrite, a forensic device used to extract evidence from smartphones. However, the attempt was not successful because, “The Cellebrite device did not recognize the iPhone, and due to the lack of a password, the extraction was unsuccessful,” an officer wrote in an incident report.
Police contacted the lawyer of the driver and requested the password to the phone; however, under New Mexico law there is no legal obligation for him to provide police with the password. The lawyer also told police that his client had already stated he was not using his cellphone at the time of the crash, according to the incident reports. LAPD returned the phone to the driver on March 27.
According to an online obituary, a celebration of Easton’s life is scheduled for 1 pm on June 27 at the Unitarian Church of Los Alamos.
The Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation recently established a memorial scholarship fund to honor the longtime Los Alamos resident and educator.
LAPSF Executive Director Jenny McCumber last month told Boomtown that she expected the first scholarship in Easton’s honor to be awarded this year.