Crash kills 4 men reported missing in NH, police seek public’s help

NH police seek public’s help in fatal crash query

MANCHESTER, N.H. — When four young men failed to show up for work and family commitments Saturday morning, worried friends and relatives spread the word online and started searching. Up and down the highway they drove, without noticing the skid marks veering off into the woods.

It wasn’t until Sunday afternoon, some 37 hours after the men were last spotted in a downtown bar and 16 hours after they were reported missing to police, that a family member saw the tire marks on busy Interstate 293 in New Hampshire. Down an embankment sat their mangled car. Inside, all four men were dead.

“Everyone must have driven by that spot 50 times,” said Stephanie Gagne, 21, a friend of the victims. “But because the car was so far into the woods, no one saw it.”

The victims were three childhood friends — Jeffrey Levesque, 24, and Alex DeFreitas, 24, both of Londonderry, and Chase Abreu, 25, of Pelham — and Levesque’s friend and co-worker, Jesse Pena, 25, of Lowell, Mass. They were last seen at a restaurant and bar around 1 a.m. Saturday.

At a news conference Monday, State Police Sgt. Paul Hunt said investigators still were trying to establish a timeline and determine when and how the crash happened. Investigators don’t know yet whether the four men were wearing seatbelts or if speed or alcohol were factors.

The crash happened on one of the state’s busiest stretches of highway, in an area where accidents are fairly common. Hunt said a lot of skid marks were on the road. He declined to comment on who discovered the wreckage.

Hunt, one of the first troopers to arrive, said the car wasn’t visible from the road.

“It’s a very wooded area,” he said. “It wasn’t until you got really close, and by really close I mean 10 feet, that you could see it.”

Hunt asked that anyone with information about the crash contact police.

Later Monday, April-Marie Driesse, a family friend, said a relative and a few other friends spotted the skid marks and then the car and notified police.

In an e-mail to The Associated Press, she said it’s a shame that while friends and family spread the word on Facebook and other social networking sites, police essentially told the family that officers wouldn’t help until the men had been missing for 24 hours. A local television station also declined to cover the disappearance without a press release from police, she said.

According to state police, the men were reported missing at 10 p.m. Saturday. State police did not immediately return calls seeking comment on the response by law enforcement. Manchester police referred questions to police in Londonderry, where three of the victims lived. Police there did not immediately return a call for comment.

Driesse described the young men as close friends and good people.

“They liked to make people laugh and hang out with their friends,” she said.

Gagne said DeFreitas was fun-loving, liked working on cars, was close to his family and had a sensitive side that made him popular with girls. Levesque, who worked with computers, enjoyed playing video games, and fixing electronics for his family and friends, she said.

“He was always aspiring to learn more about anything and everything,” she said.

Gagne said Pena was her best friend. She described him as a “good boy” who stayed out of trouble.

“Talking to him would improve even the worst days,” she said. “He was the sweetest guy that I have ever met in my entire life, and anyone you ask would say the same.”