A Marshfield man convicted of second-degree murder for driving drunk and high when he struck another car in Pembroke, killing a 13-year-old girl and seriously injuring two others, has been sentenced to life in prison.
The sentence for Gregory Goodsell, 36, includes the possibility of parole after 20 years and comes after a Plymouth Superior Court Jury convicted him last week of second-degree murder, motor vehicle manslaughter while operating under the influence, leaving the scene of property damage and two counts of operating under the influence causing serious bodily injury.
Goodsell will serve his life sentence for the murder charge at the Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center. The other offenses carry lesser sentences.
“I shamefully take responsibility for what happened,” Goodsell said during an emotional sentencing at Plymouth Superior Court on Thursday.
Goodsell, on the way home from a Christmas party the morning of Dec. 29, 2019, crashed the truck he had been driving into a Subaru on Route 139 in Pembroke, killing 13-year-old Claire Zisserson.
The two others in the Subaru, Claire’s 51-year-old mother Elizabeth Zisserson and 13-year-old friend Kendall Zemotel suffered what the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office described as “catastrophic injuries.”
“I’m so (expletive) up … I know I shouldn’t have been driving … I can’t believe I did this … I drank way too much, I’m so sorry,” Goodsell told police officers at the scene of the fatal crash around 7 that morning.
At the scene, first responders found a white Subaru with extensive front-end damage and a white Ford commercial pickup truck across the way which was flipped and had heavy passenger-side damage.
An investigation revealed that Goodsell had attended a company party and then an after-party at a home before getting behind the wheel of his “Hi-Way Safety Systems, Inc.” company truck and promptly struck a tree, breaking his passenger-side headlight.
Co-workers said that they had tried to prevent Goodsell from driving but that he ignored them, the Herald reported at the time.
Investigators determined that when he broadsided Zisserson’s Subaru after speeding through a red light at 67 mph, he had a blood alcohol content of 0.266, well in excess of the 0.08 limit, and was high on cocaine. Police found a bottle of whiskey, a beer can, two nip bottles, marijuana and a pipe inside the truck following the crash.
“Nobody should ever have to attempt to live through the pain that I’ve caused to all these people through my careless, destructive behavior,” Goodsell said Thursday, reading from a prepared statement. “If I could go back to that day and die, instead of Claire, I would in a heartbeat.”
“The constant nightmares, never being able to sleep because of what I did that morning, that is something that I will carry with me for the remainder of my life,” he added. “Sorry is an understatement. I sincerely apologize from the bottom of my heart.”
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