How Karen Read could still be on the hook for cop boyfriend John OKeefes death: Not out of the woods

Karen Read may have been cleared on criminal murder charges Wednesday — but she isn’t legally off the hook yet as still faces a civil wrongful death case brought by the family of her deceased cop boyfriend, John O’Keefe.The 2024 lawsuit against Read, 45, has been on hold pending the outcome of her criminal case.But after she was acquitted in the Boston police officer’s death Wednesday — and was sentenced to a year probation for drunk driving, the only charge she was found guilty of — the civil case is presumably free to go forward.The Aug.26 case was brought by O’Keefe’s parents, brother and niece nearly two months after the first trial against Read ended in mistrial.The family claimed Read, of Mansfield, Mass., intentionally hit O’Keefe with her Lexus SUV while she was drunk and then left him to die in a snowstorm.The relatives also blamed two bars — C.F.

McCarthy’s and Waterfall Bar & Grille — for allegedly over-serving Read when she and O’Keefe, 46, went out bar hopping in the hours before his death on Jan.29, 2022.Read — a financial analyst — allegedly had nine drinks the night of Jan.

28 before she drove O’Keefe from the Waterfall Bar to his retired cop buddy’s afterparty in Canton, Mass., the suit claimed.Read inflicted emotional distress on the family members who were forced to endure the investigation into O’Keefe’s death, the suit said.And Read traumatized O’Keefe’s then-14-year-old niece — for whom he was the caretaker when he died — when Read woke the teen up at 4:30 a.m., ranting about what might have happened to her boyfriend, the suit claimed.Then Read left the niece at home alone when she went in search of O’Keefe, the filing said.The suit is seeking at least $50,000 in damages.Legal expert Randolph Rice, who has been following the Read case, noted that the burden of proof to find Read liable in O’Keefe’s death is much lower than a criminal proceeding.“In the civil case, there’s a preponder...