Fatal haunted hayride trail: State Police inspector compared the “defective” Jeep to a .38-caliber gun in a game of Russian roulette.

— Christopher Williams (@cwilliamsSJ) September 23, 2016

Fatal haunted hayride trial: inspector says crash was “bound to happen.” @sunjournal

— Christopher Williams (@cwilliamsSJ) September 23, 2016

BATH — An inspector with the Maine State Police testified Thursday that a Jeep pulling a hayride trailer involved in a fatal crash in Mechanic Falls in 2014 wasn’t adequate to carry its load that night, neither on a public road nor on a private way.

Among the many problems with the 1979 Jeep CJ5 detected by David York were rotting spots in the frame and body, a makeshift bumper that had pulled away from the frame, and an undersized towing hitch pin, things that are of “major safety concern,” and should have been spotted that night by the person who hitched the Jeep to the trailer.

York testified during the first day of a trial for Jeep driver David Brown, 56, of South Paris in Sagadahoc County Superior Court that “there wasn’t any catastrophic loss of brake fluid” in the Jeep on Oct. 11, 2014.

Despite a partially empty master brake cylinder and diluted brake fluid that produced “spongy” braking capacity, York said nothing in the system appeared to have ruptured that would explain why Brown would say he lost the brakes when driving the Jeep, pulling nearly two dozen customers down a steep hill and crashed into trees at Harvest Hill Farm on Route 26.

He said the driver of the Jeep was “definitely negligent” if he hadn’t taken the Jeep to a mechanic to have the brakes checked out, given their condition.

Cassidy Charette, 17, of Oakland died in the crash. Many of the other 22 riders were injured.

Defense attorney Allan Lobozzo said he planned to call Brown to the witness stand to give his account of the incident.

Lobozzo said Brown was a professional driver and not a mechanic at Harvest Hill Farm, where The Gauntlet haunted hayride was a featured attraction weeks before Halloween.

The farm had two mechanics who maintained the vehicles used on the hayride, Lobozzo said.

Brown is charged with reckless conduct, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 364 days in jail.

The charge doesn’t hold him responsible for any of the injuries sustained by the customers in the hayride, Lobozzo noted.

He said the state is expected to call a witness who will testify that Brown told her the night before the crash that the brakes were “iffy,” something Brown doesn’t remember saying. Lobozzo said the driver may have been trying to scare the woman, something he and other farm workers were expected to do during the hayride to make it scarier.

Lobozzo said the case against his client will hinge on two factors: the brakes on the Jeep and its towing capacity at 4 mph, the speed of the Jeep the night of the hayride.

He said he expects to call experts to the witness stand who will say the Jeep could mathematically pull the flatbed trailer safely on that farm’s path at the speeds it reached that night.

“You have to do the hard math,” he said, writing out mathematical formulae for a jury of nine women and five men.

Lobozzo said prosecutors will argue that the brakes were inadequate for the job and that Brown should have known it; the defense will counter that the brakes failed suddenly, something Brown couldn’t have anticipated.

Brown had driven the Jeep hitched to the flatbed trailer a couple of times through the haunted hayride already that night with no brake problems, Lobozzo said.

Daniel Hanson, a Maine State Police trooper who reconstructed the crash for the state, testified that he saw no braking marks on the hill where the crash occurred.

Lobozzo asked Hanson if an absence of braking marks would be consistent with brake failure; Hanson said it would.

But Hanson said he drove the Jeep after it was towed, before a vehicle autopsy was done, and the brakes worked.

Trooper York said the Jeep was towing far beyond its capacity, according to manufacturers’ manuals that he had studied. Because the Jeep was designed for on- and off-road use, the specified towing capacities could be applied to its use as a farm vehicle, he said.

York also said the trailer should have had brakes of its own.

The trial is scheduled to last four days.

Although Mechanic Falls is in Androscoggin County, the trial was moved to Bath by Superior Court Justice MaryGay Kennedy because of pretrial publicity.

The trial for farm mechanic Philip Theberge, 39, of Norway, is expected to be held at Lincoln County Superior Court in Wiscasset in December. He is charged with misdemeanor reckless conduct.

Harvest Hill Farm’s trial is scheduled for November in Wiscasset. The farm faces charges of manslaughter, aggravated assault, driving to endanger and reckless conduct.

Peter Bolduc Jr., owner of the farm and The Gauntlet ride, was not indicted on criminal charges in the crash.

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