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Braintree teen dies on rainy street
BY MARK FONTECCHIO
The Patriot Ledger
Published Aug. 13, 2003
BRAINTREE - Sitting on her front steps yesterday, eyes wet and a cigarette
in hand, Robin Dickerson remembered her 19-year-old son, Paul, as a good kid
who loved drawing and heavy metal music.
"He never gave me one minute's trouble," she said.
Eleven miles away in Whitman, James Thompson paced his driveway trying to
understand how in a matter of seconds a routine day had turned into a
nightmare.
Dickerson was crossing Route 53 in Weymouth with two friends at about 9 a.m.
yesterday, walking to a driver education lesson, when he slipped on wet
pavement and fell in front of Thompson's commercial van.
"I was going through the green light and he came out of nowhere," Thompson
said.
The van struck Dickerson and threw him 50 feet. He died on his way to Quincy
Medical Center.
"I'm truly sorry," Thompson said between calls from family and friends
asking him what had happened and if he was OK. "I just didn't see him."
Neither of Dickerson's friends was injured.
Thompson works at G&G Commercial Systems in Quincy. He said his van sits up
high from the road, and he was concentrating on driving straight ahead in
downpour.
Thompson, 40, of 278 Beulah St., Whitman, was charged with vehicular
homicide, routine in the case of a fatal accident, and negligent driving.
"I feel truly bad for the family," Thompson said. "I had no control over it,
no control. But that doesn't bring him back, does it?"
Robin Dickerson said her son and his friends were walking from her home on
Williams Street in Braintree, near the Weymouth border, to Woods South Shore
Auto School on Commercial Street in Weymouth.
She said her son had no need for a car while attending Blue Hills Regional
Technical School in Canton.
"I feel truly bad for the family. I had no control over it, no control. But that doesn't bring him back, does it?"
James Thompson, driver of the van that hit Paul Dickerson
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"He just took his time," she said. "He didn't rush into anything."
Following graduation in June, Paul Dickerson started work at Doyle Press, a
printing company in Weymouth. He soon decided that he needed a car, his
mother said.
Once he obtained his driver's license, his parents were going to buy him his
graduation gift: a Ford Mustang.
Robin Dickerson said her son was a big fan of the bands Metallica and
Pantera. He also loved to play the drums, but didn't have a set at home.
"We would have been driven out of here if we did," Robin Dickerson said.
In addition to his mother, Dickerson leaves his father, Thomas, and two
brothers, Thomas, 20, and Eric, 11.
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