Woman charged with vehicular homicide

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Elise Gamauf

PROSPECT — Rocco Mastropietro Jr. had gone out with his wife for soup and cookies on a March morning when tragedy struck.

The 67-year-old retired Naugatuck Police officer was a passenger in a pickup truck driving down a hill on Route 68 with his wife by his side when two vehicles crashed ahead of them, sending a Jeep careening into the front of their Chevy.

Mastropietro, of Prospect, died within days of that March 11 crash. His death has now led state police to arrest the 20-year-old woman they say was behind the wheel of a Subaru that touched off the fatal collision.

Authorities say that Elise Gamauf, of Oxford, was driving the Subaru that attempted to cross Route 68, driving from Talmadge Hill Road to Matthews Street at about 1 p.m.

Gamauf was charged in recent weeks with negligent homicide with a motor vehicle and failing to obey a stop sign in connection with the crash after state police say she failed to yield to traffic, moving her car into the intersection, which sparked a series of events that led to Mastropietro’s death.

A state police investigation found a 2008 Jeep driven by a 21-year-old man was heading west on Route 68 when Gamauf pulled into the intersection, hitting him on the driver’s side near the rear of his vehicle.

That collision sent the Jeep into a spin that took it across the road’s center line and into the path of an oncoming Chevy pickup that was driven by Mastropietro’s wife, Denise. The couple was pinned into their truck following the crash, which sent the Jeep onto the top of their Chevy.

Both Mastropietro and his wife were wearing their seat belts at the time of the crash and the airbags deployed in their truck, according to state police.

Mastropietro was awake, but in pain when he was removed from the truck by firefighters.

After he was driven to Saint Mary’s Hospital, he fell unconscious and doctors rushed to treat bleeding in his brain. He succumbed to his injuries, including blunt trauma to the head, two days after the crash.

In addition to serving in the Naugatuck police force, he was also a retired head of security at Naugatuck High School.

Gamauf later told police she looked both ways before pulling into the intersection and was not talking on her cellphone. She claimed to police investigators that the Jeep struck her car. A 15-year-old girl was also in the Subaru with Gamauf at the time, according to state police.

Both Mastropietro’s wife and the driver of the Jeep told police that the Subaru had crashed into the Jeep before the fatal collision.

Gamauf was released on a promise to appear in Waterbury Superior Court later this year.

Gamauf’s attorney, John R. Gulash, declined to comment when he was reached last week, saying it would be inappropriate to comment on a pending matter.