Four Time Drunk Driving Offender Killed on Bicycle by Drunk Driver

Police say drunk driver killed cyclist in crash

Globe Staff / April 25, 2008

MARSHFIELD - Gary Sanborn pedaled his bike in the dark along Route 139, the price he had to pay after pleading guilty to four drunken driving offenses and having his license revoked.

In a sad twist, Sanborn died while riding his bicycle Tuesday night, struck by a pickup truck whose driver, police say, was drunk.

Adrian MacKinnon, 44, of Marshfield, was arrested afterward and charged with motor vehicle homicide.

Officer Ralph Poland of the Marshfield police wrote in a police report that MacKinnon said that he was driving behind a man on a bike and that he "couldn't avoid hitting him."

"I could smell a strong odor of breath mint with a mixture of an alcoholic beverage mixed in coming from [him]," Poland wrote in the police report.

A witness driving behind MacKinnon also told police she smelled alcohol on MacKinnon's breath, according to the report. MacKinnon refused a breathalyzer and field sobriety tests.

He was held on $3,000 bond after his arraignment Wednesday and was later released on personal recognizance. His lawyer, John T. Diamond III, did not return phone calls yesterday.

Sanborn, 60, had been without a driver's license for 10 years. After his fourth drunken driving offense in 1998, when he also was charged with property damage and leaving the scene of an accident, a judge revoked his license and sentenced him to a year in jail.

Sanborn's license was also indefinitely suspended in 2002 for failure to pay child support. Registry officials said he would have been eligible to have his driver's license reinstated when he had paid off his outstanding debts, but he had never applied.

Sanborn's family could not be reached yesterday for comment.

According to the Patriot Ledger of Quincy, Sanborn was a Vietnam veteran and had been staying with his mother, who lives in an apartment on Ocean Street, a heavily traveled two-lane state road. Sanborn was a few blocks from her apartment when he was struck and killed.

Poland, the police officer, found Sanborn's body under MacKinnon's GMC pickup truck. He had no pulse.