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Van driver testifies he lied to
police
October 5, 2007
By Robert Gavin
ALBANY -- The driver of a state van
in which an autistic boy died on a field trip admitted today that he
lied to police and never checked on the child after he stopped
breathing.
"It was one of those things. I was
shocked, I was scared," Nadeem Mall, 33, testified in Albany County
Court, when asked why he didn't drive to a hospital on Feb. 15. "I
didn't know what to do."
Mall is testifying against his
former co-worker, Edwin Tirado, 36, of Schenectady, who is charged
with manslaughter in the death of 13-year-old Jonathan Carey.
Mall and Tirado took Carey and a
16-year-old youth from the O.D. Heck Developmental Center on an
outing to Crossgates Mall. They never got there.
After Carey fell unconscious, the
health aides drove around for 90 minutes, at one point picking up a
video game and dropping it off at Tirado's home in Schenectady, Mall
testified.
The prosecution contends Tirado had
"squeezed the life" of the boy while improperly using a restraint
technique. It happened while Mall -- who was required to be within
arm's length of Carey and was not authorized to drive the van --
argued over a bank account in the Hannaford supermarket on Wolf Road
in Colonie, he said.
After Mall left the witness stand
this afternoon, Jonathan's father, Michael Carey of Glenmont,
interrupted a question-and-answer session between Tirado's attorney,
Brian Donohue, and reporters outside the courtroom. Donohue, visibly
irked, abruptly walked away.
"What he is doing is disgusting,"
the father said, fighting tears. "He knows his client's guilty. Ed
Tirado was sitting on my son and he took the life of my son."
The exchange followed a heated
court session in which Donohue grilled Mall, the prosecution's star
witness. Mall was fired from O.D. Heck where he had been a trainee
for three months. Under cross-examination, he admitted he had also
been fired at a job for the Center for Disability Services in Troy.
Mall acknowledged mixing lies with
the truth when Colonie police interviewed him the night Carey died.
While Mall initially told investigators he saw Tirado rubbing Carey
to wake him after they returned to O.D. Heck, it really didn't
happen that way, he testified.
"I was lying. That wasn't true," he
said.
Mall said he never checked on Carey
even after he stopped breathing and the men were running errands.
Donohue focused on Mall's testimony
from the day before when he told jurors that Tirado exclaimed, "I
think I killed him" upon their return to O.D. Heck. Mall plead
guilty this summer to criminally negligent homicide and is serving
six months in the Albany County Jail.
This morning Assistant District
Attorney David Rossi said he doesn't plan for the 16-year-old boy on
the field trip to testify. But jurors wound up hearing his alleged
words, anyway.
Mall testified that the youth told
Tirado to get off Carey.
While the jury was out of the
courtroom, Donohue told acting state Supreme Court Justice Lamothe
judge that the youth has a reputation for making up stories.
Tirado is expected to take the
stand in his own defense.
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