New Year’s Eve Reveler Lying in Road Hit by Mass. Officer Responding to Emergency Call, Police Say

The officer was driving to respond to a call when they hit an "unknown object" — and then discovered that object was a human being splayed across the road.

A New Year's Eve reveler was run over by a police cruiser in Chatham, Massachusetts, in the early hours of Thursday morning.

The officer was responding to an emergency call, police said, when he or she ran over a man lying in the middle of an unlit stretch of road around 4 a.m., police said.

The man was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead soon thereafter.

The police department's official news release about the incident does not identify the officer involved in the collision, but promises that the officer will be named within 24 hours.

The victim is identified in the news release as 22-year-old Garrett Gagne.

According to the news release, it seems likely that Gagne was killed by the officer running him over, though the news release notes that the details of the incident warrant further investigation and it was unclear what Gagne's condition was just prior to the collision — or why he was lying in the middle of the road in the first place.

Police said it appeared that Gagne was in town celebrated New Year's Eve and are seeking his friends to learn more about the circumstances leading up to the collision.

Investigators from the Chatham Police Department, Massachusetts State Police Detective Division and State Police Crash Reconstruction Team are investigating the collision, police said.

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