Details Emerge In Fatal Main Street Car Accident

It was raining heavily at 1:45 on Saturday morning when Robert Tellez killed himself and severely injured his girlfriend in a motor vehicle accident on Main Street.

But police do not suspect that the weather was the major contributing factor in the accident. Speed was.

"He was going just below or just above 100 miles-per-hour," said East Greenwich Police Chief David Desjarlais. He would not say whether alcohol was a factor, although police believe the couple was coming from Kingstown Bowl, a bar and bowling alley near the North Kingstown/ East Greenwich town line. 

Tellez, driving a 2003 blue Honda, failed to negotiate the bend on Main Street near London Street and instead drove straight through a street tree and the East Greenwich Farms parking lot before slamming into a concrete wall.

The car actually flipped over before hitting the wall, according to East Greenwich Fire Chief John McKenna.

"We don't know if it flipped over before he hit the tree or if it was flipping over when he hit the tree," McKenna said. "He hit the wall upside down and the car bounced backwards."

Fire fighters at the East Greenwich station "heard a loud bang and thought it may have been thunder," McKenna said.  Then the 911 calls started coming in.

Police said they received six 911 calls about the accident. But that was not their first encounter with Tellez and his Honda that night.

Only a few moments prior to the fatal accident, Officer Eric Archibald noticed the blue Honda on Post Road near the Benny's Plaza. The car appeared to be stopped in the middle of the road at an "odd angle," according to Desjarlais.

Archibald, who was driving south, passed the vehicle and turned around to block traffic driving north for what he thought was a car stuck in the road.

"As he pulled up," Desjarlais said, "he didn't think anything other than it was a disabled vehicle."

But when Archibald pulled over to lend a hand, Tellez's Honda took off "at a high rate of speed," according to Desjarlais.

So fast did the Honda take off that Archibald decided not to pursue. "Under the circumstance, he made the exact right decision," Desjarlais said. 

Archibald called ahead to the station and told dispatch to be on the lookout for a blue vehicle speeding north. An officer there headed to the corner of Main Street and First Avenue, but didn't encounter the blue Honda. Officers thought this must mean the car turned down a side street. In fact, it was probably because it had already passed by.

Moments later, the police were informed of the accident by the 911 calls.
Desjarlais said, "When the call came in the next thing you heard over the radio was, 'what do you want to bet it's that blue car.'"

When police and rescue officials arrived on the scene, Tellez, 38, of Johnston, was pronounced dead. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt. His body was found in the rear of the car, near the back seat and trunk area, partially ejected from the vehicle.

His girlfriend Dina Paquin, who was in the passenger seat, was wearing her seat belt. "There is no doubt the fact that she had a seat belt on saved her life," Desjarlais said.

She was unconscious when rescue personnel arrived on the scene. "She was upside down and seatbelted in," McKenna said.

A North Kingstown fire truck was first on the scene. They were providing mutual aid for East Greenwich firefighters who were on a call at Stanley Bostitch. Normally, Warwick fire fighters would staff the downtown East Greenwich station, but they were responding to a boat fire in Greenwich Cove.

Warwick and East Greenwich fire fighters arrived on the scene shortly thereafter. 

Within 15 or 20 minutes, Paquin was safely removed from the vehicle, according to McKenna.

"They used the jaws of life to cut the posts out of the vehicle and create a point for EMS to extricate her," McKenna said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, she was in stable condition but still recovering in the hospital.

This story was updated at 9:30 on Wednesday morning.