Lasell student hit, killed by car is mourned

NEWTON -- A somber Geoffrey Caravella looked yesterday at the photographs, the poem, bouquets of flowers, and candle stubs and started talking about his friend and Lasell College lacrosse teammate, Kevin M. Flaherty, who was killed Friday when he was hit by a car.

``He was always smiling, so everybody else around him was always happy," said Caravella, a sophomore defenseman, recalling Flaherty, 22, a senior at the school and a native of Norfolk. ``There wasn't a time I spent with him when I didn't have a smile on my face."

Flaherty was crossing Woodland Road, which bisects the campus in a residential West Newton neighborhood, around 1:20 a.m. when he was struck by a car driven by a 22-year-old Newton woman, according to Lieutenant Bruce Apotheker, a Newton police spokesman.

Apotheker would not identify the driver and said the investigation is continuing.

Flaherty was taken to Newton-Wellesley Hospital, then transferred to Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was pronounced brain dead at 4:05 p.m Friday, according to his father, Michael Flaherty.

Flaherty, the youngest of Michael and Mary Flaherty's three children, was studying business marketing with the hope that he would eventually take over the family's dry cleaning business, Michael Flaherty said in a telephone interview.

``Not only was he my son, he was my best friend," Michael Flaherty said.

Several students said Woodland Road is dangerous, especially at night and early morning, because of limited street lighting and a lack of traffic controls, such as signs warning that there are pedestrians in the area.

Apotheker said the city has not been asked by the college to put in crosswalks or speed limit signs in the neighborhood.

According to fellow students, Flaherty spent the bulk of Thursday night at Case House, the residence hall where he lived, on Woodland Road.

He and others then went to a birthday party at Bragdon Hall, also on Woodland Road, where he stayed until after 1 a.m. He was with friends walking back to his residence hall when he was struck.

Michael Flaherty said that while his son was in the Boston hospital, dozens of Kevin's friends stopped by. He said their presence helped him and his family to make what he called ``the toughest decision of my life," to donate his son's organs.

Flaherty said the family ultimately concluded Kevin would have wanted to help others in need.

``Hopefully they will benefit," said Michael Flaherty. ``And hopefully, they will have a smile on their faces, like he used to."