Karen Read now faces civil suit as well as murder charge in police officer boyfriend’s death

PLYMOUTH, Mass. — The family of the police officer boyfriend Karen Read is accused of killing by hitting him with her vehicle and leaving him to die in the snow has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against her and two bars where they had been drinking that night.

The lawsuit blames the death of John O’Keefe on Read, and also on what it describes as the bars’ negligence by continuing to serve drinks to her despite signs she was drunk. It says the first bar served her seven alcoholic drinks in about 90 minutes the night of Jan. 28, 2022, and that Read carried the last drink into the second bar, where she was served a shot and a mixed alcoholic drink within an hour.

The lawsuit doesn’t say how much alcohol O’Keefe was served that night before he got into Read’s SUV.

The lawsuit filed Monday in Plymouth Superior Court in Massachusetts by Paul O’Keefe on behalf of his family and his brother’s estate names Read, the Waterfall Bar & Grill and C.F. McCarthy’s as defendants. It asks for a jury trial.

Calls to Read’s lawyers seeking comment on the civil suit weren’t immediately returned on Tuesday. A person who answered the phone at the Waterfall said the owners were unavailable, and another at C.F. McCarthy’s declined comment.

Read has pleaded not guilty and awaits a Jan. 27 retrial on charges of second-degree murder, manslaughter while operating a motor vehicle under the influence and leaving the scene of a fatal accident. Her two-month criminal trial ended in July when the judge declared a mistrial after jurors said they were deadlocked. The judge dismissed arguments that jurors later said they had unanimously agreed Read wasn’t guilty on the charges of murder and leaving the scene.

After the bar-hopping, Read, 44, a former adjunct professor at Bentley College, dropped off O’Keefe, a 16-year member of the Boston police, outside the Canton home of another police officer. His body was found in the front yard. An autopsy found O’Keefe died of hypothermia and blunt force trauma.

Read’s lawyers argued that O’Keefe was killed inside the home and that those involved chose to frame her because she was a “convenient outsider.”

The lawsuit says Read and O’Keefe had been arguing and that she knew she had hit him with her SUV before returning to his home. It alleges that she woke up his 14-year-old niece several hours later saying that something had happened to O’Keefe and that he might have been hit by her or a snow plow.