The family of Karen Read’s deceased boyfriend filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her this week that accused her of leaving the Boston police officer for dead in a snowstorm.
The parents, brother and niece of late officer John O’Keefe III accused Read, 44, of intentionally striking him with her SUV while intoxicated and leaving him to die, according to the lawsuit filed in Plymouth Superior Court on Monday.
The suit also accused two bars — C.F. McCarthy’s and the Waterfall Bar & Grille — of over-serving Read in the hours before O’Keefe died on Jan. 29, 2022.
Read had nine drinks while she and O’Keefe, 46, bar-hopped at both locations on the night of Jan. 28, the complaint alleged.
She was supposedly “under the influence of alcohol and unable to drive a motor vehicle safely” when she drove O’Keefe from the Waterfall to a fellow BPD officer’s home for an afterparty.
At 12:45 a.m. Jan. 29, Read’s blood alcohol content would have been between 0.135% and 0.292%, according to her blood test at a local medical center later that morning.
Read also allegedly knew that her two-year relationship with O’Keefe was on the rocks, and had “picked fights, experienced jealousy and had delusions of unfaithfulness” in the months before the incident, the lawsuit said.
O’Keefe’s family accused Read of hitting him with her car and leaving him to die in a snowstorm.
He was pronounced dead several hours later, and the medical examiner listed his official cause of death as “blunt impact injuries of head and hypothermia.”
Later that day, Read supposedly visited O’Keefe’s family in a veiled effort to comfort them, and used the opportunity to remove her car and “relevant evidence” from the scene, the family claimed.
In addition to the “aggravated emotional distress” that O’Keefe’s loved ones said they suffered over the course of the subsequent investigation, the family also accused Read of inflicting emotional distress on the police officer’s 14-year-old niece, who was under his care when he died.
Read supposedly woke the teen up at 4:30 a.m. Jan. 29 and claimed that O’Keefe had not returned home, the lawsuit stated.
The young girl allegedly heard Read say, “Maybe I did something … Maybe a snow plow hit him … Maybe I had hit him … Maybe I hit him … (we) were in an argument … Maybe he got hit by a snow plow.”
She then allegedly left the teen home alone while she went back to the location of the afterparty to look for O’Keefe.
O’Keefe’s family is seeking at least $50,000 in damages.
The lawsuit comes nearly two months after Read’s murder trial ended in a hung jury following five days of deliberations.
She has vehemently maintained her innocence throughout the high-profile investigation, and claimed she was scapegoated by Boston law enforcement.
Read’s legal team attempted to have two of the three charges she faced tossed on the grounds that some of the jurors said they planned to acquit her of second-degree murder.
Norfolk County Judge Beverly Cannone ruled last week that both counts — second-degree murder and leaving the scene of a death — would stand at the second trial, because Read was not formally acquitted of either charge.
In addition to the two charges, Read will face a count of manslaughter with a motor vehicle.
The new trial is set for Jan. 27, 2025.
Read’s legal team did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for a comment.
