Mom Charged With Driving High In Crash That Seriously Hurt Young Son
BOXFORD (CBS) -- The mother of a seven-year-old boy who was seriously injured in a car crash was ordered held without bail on OUI and drug charges Tuesday.
Kimberly Desrochers' car crashed into a tree in Boxford around 10:45 a.m. Monday. Desrochers and her two-year-old daughter Eliza were taken to Beverly Hospital. Her son Gabriel was rushed to Massachusetts General Hospital with a serious head injury.
Desrochers, a 36-year-old from Haverhill, pleaded not guilty to several charges at her arraignment in Haverhill District Court. She's charged with OUI-drugs and serious injury, OUI-drugs as a second offense, assault and battery on a child causing serious bodily injury, two counts of permit serious injury to a child, two counts of OUI-child endangerment, marked lanes violation and failure to wear a seatbelt.
Prosecutors said Desrochers admitted to buying heroin in Salem and using it in the car in front of her children before the crash. She also allegedly admitted to EMTs that she uses a half-a-gram of heroin per day and that she took Klonipin and Suboxone before the crash because the heroin wasn't working fast enough.
The neighbors of Desrochers were shocked to hear she crashed into a tree with her two children in the car. "It gives me chills and it hits home real close," Megan Rocshette said.
"You do drugs, you're gonna pay. You do drugs one way or another you're paying," said Joseph Clement.
While Desrochers' mother told police she wasn't aware of her daughter's drug use, Haverhill's clerk's office says this isn't her first offense and she had an OUI out of Lowell that was dismissed.
"With the epidemic that's going on it's hurtful I feel bad with the children who have to deal with it," Rocshette added.
Now all neighbors can think about is her son, who was rushed into surgery for a serious injury to his head.
"I blame the courts too she'll go to court and they will slap her little wrist and send her on her way. What good is that. Start throwing them in jail," Clement said. "Maybe she will smarten up, maybe the kid will be alright."
Other neighbors feel she simply made a bad choice.
"It was unfortunate the family made a mistake. She can get treatment. She has a disease," Gary Huber said.
Desrochers will be back in court next Monday for a dangerousness hearing.
WBZ-TV's Lisa Gresci contributed to this report.
