Mass. State Police Trooper Injured in Wrong-Way Crash Weeks After Fatal Collision

By Colleen Cronin

Source Boston Herald

Less than a month after Trooper Kevin Trainor was killed in a wrong-way crash, another trooper was injured in similar incident on Route 1.

The trooper was hit by a driver going the wrong way in the northbound lane of the Peabody portion of the highway early Sunday morning, according to the State Police.

The crash occurred around 2 a.m., after a trooper from the Danvers Barracks saw the driver heading in the wrong direction and notified other officers, the department said.

“Together, they formulated a plan to stop vehicles from entering the roadway,” a department spokesperson said. “Minutes later, the wrong-way driver struck one of the responding troopers in his marked cruiser.”

Both the trooper and the driver of the vehicle, Lucas Gustavo Brajak DeAlmeida Benedetto, were transported to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

DeAlmeida Benedetto, 21, of Newburyport, has already been released from the hospital and faces charges of operating under the influence of alcohol, negligent operation of a a motor vehicle, and driving the wrong way on a state highway, according to the MSP.

He is expected to be arraigned at Peabody District Court on Monday.

Sunday’s crash is just one in a series of recent wrong-way incidents.

Just a few weeks ago, Trooper Trainor, 30, was killed just a few miles north of Sunday’s crash near the Lynnfield/ Saugus line. Trainor was also responding to a wrong-way driver around 2 a.m., a few minutes after his regular shift ended, when a driver collided head on with Trainor’s cruiser.

The other driver, Hernon Marrerro, 50, was pronounced dead on the scene, while Trainor was transported to Mass General Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries hours later.

Authorities have not said why Marrero was driving the wrong-way ahead of the crash.

In the wake of Trainor’s death, lawmakers have proposed new laws that would provide funding to make directional signage clearer and create an alert system to let drivers know when someone might be driving the wrong way.

Senate Minority Leader Bruce Tarr, who is sponsoring the action, said during the recent budget debate that they used Connecticut as a model where these types of incidents have been reduced by 86%.

Mentioning two other fatal wrong-way crash in 2024 and 2025, Tarr called the crashes a “scourge on our highways.”

“It happens far more frequently than we understand, mostly because when it occurs, the driver self-corrects, and it never gets reported,” he said. “When that doesn’t happen, all too often it is fatal.”

The amendment passed in the Senate but still needs to be approved alongside the final fiscal year 2027 budget.

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