Speed in crash said to top 80
But no evidence of drinking cited
Two Mount Ida College students on a late-night food run were driving in excess of 80 miles per hour in a residential area when their silver 2002 Acura RSX crashed on July 1, according to a report from the Newton Police Department.
The investigative report, released to the Globe last week, offers new details about the fatal accident.
According to the report, the car skidded on the wrong side of the road and backwards for nearly 250 feet before jumping the curb. Airborne, the car broadsided a tree 8 to 10 feet off the ground, twisting the vehicle around the trunk.
Both Takahiko Nagashima, 23, who drove the car, and Masaki Matsuguchi, 22, died in the crash.
Despite the high rate of speed, Newton police Captain Matthew Cummings said there was no evidence that drinking played a role in the crash and police did not plan to ask for blood alcohol test results from the state medical examiner.
"We have a couple of kids going fast," Cummings said in an interview. "They're in a fast car, inexperienced and new to the country. Nobody at the scene is saying alcohol was involved. Normally, you smell it immediately. The ambulance drivers tell you immediately. There's been none of that."
The state medical examiner's office conducts autopsies on crash victims, and those results are then sent to the local district attorney's office, said Wayne Sampson, president of the Massachusetts Chiefs of Police Association.
Corey Welford, a spokesman for Middlesex District Attorney Gerard T. Leone Jr., said the office would not publicly release information about Nagashima's blood alcohol level. They are not public documents, he said, "based on privacy issues."
It is a decision made out of respect for the victims and their families, according to David Deiuliis, spokesman for MADD Massachusetts.
"Even if we knew this was a drinking and driving crash . . . would it make a difference to the general public?" he asked. "I think that it wouldn't."
News of the fatal crash stunned the small Mount Ida College campus, where the students were well known. Both came to the United States from Japan to attend the college's design school.
Matsuguchi, a junior majoring in fashion merchandising and marketing, had been making arrangements to live off campus for the summer.
Nagashima had graduated from Mount Ida just a month earlier and had planned to return to Japan.
Both Nagashima and Matsuguchi had just finished classes and were ready to start celebrating summer the night of the crash.
According to the Newton police report, a friend who saw the men around midnight said they were heading to a Store 24 in Newton Highlands to get some food. In the course of their investigation, police interviewed a clerk at the store who rang up their purchase.
Nagashima was driving between 81 and 85 miles per hour on Dedham Street, the Newton police report says, when he lost control of the car. A sign posting a speed limit of 30 miles per hour was located approximately three-tenths of a mile before the site of the impact, according to the report. The car swerved, skidding sideways and backwards, before hitting the curb, slamming into the tree, and sliding more than 2 feet down the trunk.
Cummings said the car remained suspended several feet off the ground, encircling the tree with opposite fenders touching, when investigators arrived. "It was just horrific," he said.
Despite the early-morning hour, neighbors rushed out of their homes to see what happened.
Firefighters used the Jaws of Life in their efforts to save the men. Nagashima was pronounced dead at Newton-Wellesley Hospital. Matsuguchi was flown to Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, where he died. Police escorted college officials to the hospitals to identify the bodies.
Philip A. Conroy Jr., vice president for enrollment and marketing for Mount Ida, said both men's families, who came to the college from Japan after the accident, asked university officials not to comment on either the deaths or the families' visit.
Conroy said the college will hold a memorial service for both men in September.
Megan Woolhouse can be reached at mwoolhouse@globe.com. 