Driver in Galluccio crash breaks silence
State senator pleads not guilty
The man whose car state Senator Anthony Galluccio rearended described yesterday the shock from the impact - and from the discovery that Galluccio had quickly driven away from the scene.
“He should have just gotten out and exchanged papers,’’ said Samuel Tager, 46, of Cambridge. “He shouldn’t have stopped because he is an elected official; he should have stopped because he is a man. . . . If he hadn’t taken off that would have been the end of it.’’
The father of two children, who were with him and his wife in their
Galluccio, of Cambridge, is due back in court Nov. 20. His license is active, according to the Registry of Motor Vehicles. Galluccio’s driving record includes two drunken driving convictions - one in 1984, when he was 17; the second in 1997. In 2005, he triggered a four-car crash in Boston at 2 a.m. but did not face criminal charges.
Through an aide at his Beacon Hill office yesterday, Galluccio declined a Globe request to respond.
Tager said he has remained silent since the Oct. 4 crash because he does not want to become part of any political fallout the Cambridge Democrat may face. He said he has voted for Galluccio in the past and considers him an effective politician with many worthy works to his credit, including years of supporting youth athletics in Cambridge.
Tager said he is now speaking out to publicly thank Cambridge police for their investigation and to thank the witnesses.
Galluccio has not said where he was before the crash and was not interviewed by law enforcement until the following day when he reported the crash to police, Cambridge police have said.
Tager also said he hopes the crash - and Galluccio’s response to it - prompts the 42-year-old to get some assistance.
“I think he has some issues that he needs to get help with,’’ said Tager.
In a telephone interview, Tager said he and his family were returning from Danehy Park in Cambridge where his 10-year-old daughter scored her first goal as a member of a travel soccer team.
It was about 5:30 p.m. on a Sunday and he was on Garden Street trying to make a left-hand turn onto Linnaean Street when the crash occurred. He said he had sat at the intersection until the light turned green, but traffic would not allow him to turn. He was waiting for traffic to clear with his left-turn signal on when he looked in his rear-view mirror and saw a black car.
“In the one one-hundredth of a second that I had to think, I thought that the car is coming fast and there is not enough space’’ for him to stop, Tager recalled.
And then he felt a “really shocking kind of jolt. . . . My head was spinning,’’ after Galluccio’s 2009 Infiniti collided with the minivan.
Tager said he checked to make sure his family was OK, and then pulled over so he could exchange papers. But in what Galluccio has called “poor judgment,’’ the Democratic senator left,, cutting through the driveway of the Harvard Dance Center, according to a Cambridge police report.
Witnesses got the license plate number, and red paint from Galluccio’s license plate was found on the minivan’s bumper, police said in a report.
Tager was taken by ambulance to Mount Auburn Hospital, where he was treated for neck and back pain and later released.
The next day, his 13-year old son had numbness in his hands and has since been treated as an outpatient for continuing numbness in his extremities and shoulder pain, Tager said.
“I hope we are not lifelong enemies. . . . Accidents happen to everybody,’’ he said.
“It’s his decision to flee the scene that brings us to the present situation.’’
John Ellement can be reached at ellement@globe.com. 
