Prosecutors say Sgt. Scott Quigley was drunk and driving negligently when his unmarked cruiser struck a van in 2023, killing a passenger a month later.
BOSTON, MA — A Massachusetts State Police sergeant has been indicted on a felony motor vehicle homicide charge in a 2023 Woburn crash that prosecutors say happened after he drove an unmarked cruiser while drunk and crossed into oncoming traffic.
Thursday’s indictment puts new legal weight behind allegations that had already shaken State Police and spilled into an unrelated murder case in Lowell. Prosecutors say Sgt. Scott Quigley, 41, was off duty when his cruiser hit a wheelchair-accessible van carrying Angelo Schettino, 37, who later died from his injuries. The case has drawn attention not only because of the death, but also because questions about Quigley’s toxicology results and the initial handling of the crash surfaced more than two years later, prompting outside scrutiny, an internal affairs inquiry and fresh questions about what officials knew and when they knew it.
The charge traces back to Dec. 12, 2023, when prosecutors say Quigley was driving an unmarked State Police vehicle on Lexington Street in Woburn at about 5 p.m. The cruiser crossed the center line and struck an oncoming van head-on, according to the indictment and prosecutors’ account. The van was carrying Schettino, who had developmental challenges and used a wheelchair, as he was being driven back to his group home in Lynn. The van’s driver was also injured. Schettino was taken to a hospital and died on Jan. 13, 2024, 31 days after the crash. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner later determined his death was caused by injuries from the collision. Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden’s office said the statewide grand jury indictment alleges Quigley was driving both negligently and under the influence of alcohol.
Officials have not yet released a full public account of every piece of evidence presented to the grand jury, but several details are now central to the case. Prosecutors have said Quigley’s blood alcohol content was reported at 0.11, above the legal limit of 0.08. The indictment announced this week accuses him of felony motor vehicle homicide, and an arraignment is expected later in Middlesex Superior Court in Woburn, though a date had not been publicly scheduled as of Sunday. Quigley’s lawyer, Christina Pujals Ronan, has disputed the criminal framing of the crash. In earlier statements, she said Quigley has maintained that the collision was a tragic accident, not a crime, and after the indictment she said her client expected the charge and looked forward to court. Massachusetts State Police Col. Geoffrey Noble, in a statement released after the indictment, said the agency would not tolerate the misconduct alleged by prosecutors and said any failure to meet professional standards would bring accountability.
The case carries broader weight because it did not come fully into public view at the time of the crash. For months, the collision was not publicly known as a potential drunken-driving homicide case. It resurfaced in early 2026 during litigation tied to a separate murder prosecution in Lowell in which Quigley had served as an investigator. Defense lawyers in that case argued that information about Quigley’s role in the Woburn crash should have been disclosed because it could affect his credibility as a witness and the integrity of the prosecution. Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan later said in a letter that her office had not known of the allegations until jury selection in that murder case, and that had the information been disclosed earlier, the office would have referred the matter out immediately for an independent review. Because Quigley was assigned as a State Police detective to the Middlesex district attorney’s office, the criminal case was referred in January 2026 to Suffolk County prosecutors.
Separate court filings and reporting in the civil case brought by Schettino’s family have added to the pressure on law enforcement agencies to explain the timeline. The family’s wrongful death litigation seeks to determine who inside State Police knew about Quigley’s toxicology results while the crash was being treated publicly as an accident. Some filings in related proceedings have pointed to hospital records, line-of-duty benefits claims and later-produced cruiser video as pieces of a record that defense lawyers and family lawyers say should have raised questions much earlier. Those issues are not themselves the homicide charge announced this week, but they have become part of the larger controversy surrounding the case. Lawyers for Schettino’s family have said the indictment is an important step, while also saying they still want the full truth about the response after the crash. Some details remain unresolved in public, including the complete chain of notification inside State Police and which supervisors, if any, reviewed Quigley’s records before this year.
The legal path ahead is now clearer than it was before the indictment, even if major questions remain. Quigley is expected to be arraigned in Middlesex Superior Court, where he will formally answer the felony motor vehicle homicide charge. Prosecutors will then have to turn over evidence under the normal criminal process, and defense lawyers are likely to challenge both the intoxication evidence and the conclusion that the crash amounted to a felony offense rather than a tragic accident or medical event. At the same time, other reviews remain active. State Police previously opened an internal affairs investigation after the allegations became public this year, and the agency has also sought an outside review of how it handles serious on-duty crashes. The unrelated Lowell murder case that helped bring the Woburn matter into view has already been disrupted by the disclosure fight and remains part of the fallout from the Quigley allegations.
The human toll has stayed at the center of the case even as the legal and institutional issues have widened. Schettino was not a public official or a figure in the justice system; he was a 37-year-old man riding in a transport van to his home when the vehicles collided. Family lawyer Michael Mahoney has said relatives were stunned to learn that alcohol was allegedly involved after they had long been led to believe the crash was unavoidable. Their reaction has echoed a broader public response in Massachusetts, where State Police has already been under pressure in other high-profile cases. Noble said the department must protect the reputation of troopers who serve honorably while also confronting alleged misconduct directly. For Quigley, the next stage is the courtroom. For Schettino’s family, and for the agencies now under scrutiny, the next stage is likely to include both criminal proceedings and a deeper accounting of how a deadly crash involving a veteran homicide detective took more than two years to reach an indictment.
As of Sunday, Quigley had been indicted but not yet arraigned, and no court date had been publicly announced. The next major milestone is his first appearance in Middlesex Superior Court, where the prosecution is expected to outline the charge in open court.
Author note: Last updated March 29, 2026.