Ten months later, Castner probe questions remain

MARBLEHEAD – Chris Castner knows nothing is going to bring back his daughter, Allie, but he is relentless in finding out the truth about Aug. 24, 2009.Allie Castner, then 15, was struck by a car while crossing Pleasant Street near Mohawk Road shortly before 7 p.m. as Thomas Larivee, now 19, of 4 Sunset Road, Salem was driving westbound.Castner, a Roosevelt Avenue resident, sustained a serious head injury and was transported to Salem Hospital by ambulance and subsequently airlifted to Boston Medical Center where she was pronounced dead at 11:52 p.m. that night.While no criminal charges will be filed against Larivee, information about the accident continues to come to light, with the latest being that a Marblehead police dispatcher received a three-day suspension for the way she handled a potential witness.”I had four daughters and now I have three,” Chris Castner said. “Why do I have three? Because Allie tried to cross the street and got run over.”Marblehead Police Chief Robert Picariello suspended the dispatcher for three days after concluding, in a letter obtained by The Item, “I find the following: that you failed to exercise good judgment in the performance of your duties by letting a witness to a fatal accident leave the station without first ascertaining his name and contact information for follow-up.”The dispatcher served two days of the suspension Oct. 15 and 16 and was required to attend a class related to customer service.Picariello also wrote the disciplinary letter would be removed from the dispatcher’s personnel file on Oct. 14, 2011 if the dispatcher had no further disciplinary issues.”My reaction (to learning about the dispatcher turning away a potential witness) was what is going on here? We had to stumble on this information that a potential witness was turned away by the Marblehead Police,” Chris Castner said. “I was shocked. It is bad enough this happened to us, but come on.”Castner’s death prompted an on-again, off-again selectmen inquiry into her death that resulted in the board accepting a gag order on further discussions about the accident. Marblehead residents started sporting “slow down for Allie” bumper stickers on their cars and in late October, District Attorney Jonathan Blodgett asked Worcester District Attorney Joseph D. Early to take over the accident investigation to avoid any potential or perceived conflict of interest.”After a thorough investigation that included dozens of interviews, a forensic analysis of the driver’s Blackberry and a state police collision reconstruction, the conclusion is the accident was unavoidable,” Early said when releasing his decision in March. “With no evidence to establish the commission of a crime, no charges will be brought.””As a family we expected to have a professional law enforcement agency handling this,” Chris Castner said. “It is against the law to run over little girls in crosswalks.”Do we want justice? Yes,” Chris Castner said. “Is this punishable by hanging? No. Is it punishable by jail time? No. Nobody is above the law. The law is not above the law and we feel like they are trying to dupe us.”Last month selectmen advertised for proposals for an independent review of the Allie Castner investigation. The advertisement, described as exploratory, requested proposals for an independent assessment of the Marblehead Police Department and an evaluation of a recent police investigation. Former Selectmen Chairwoman Jackie Belf-Becker, who was still chairwoman when the ad was placed, called it exploratory in nature and confirmed the investigation it referred to was the investigation into the death of Castner.Earlier this month it was announced that four independent firms had submitted proposals to the town.