Wonderful life was ended in tragic accident on Mass. Pike

By all accounts, Dennis Scott wasn't destined to be the man he became.

The oldest of three boys, he was raised in a small apartment behind Great Brook Valley by heroin junkies who abused and neglected them. Their mother's boyfriend was a sadistic bully who beat them. Their mother died of AIDS when Dennis was a teenager.

“Dennis never had an easy life,” said his brother Dale. “He was never taught right from wrong, never had any positive role models, he was never taught compassion or generosity.”

Yet, somehow he would grow up to possess those qualities. He became a mechanic and worked hard. A large, strapping man dubbed the “Gentle Giant,” he was a father figure to his brothers and role model to his nephews. He married the love of his life in 2003 and was a devoted husband, the kind who gave roses to his wife for no reason and even treated his mother-in-law like a queen.

“He never let his background affect him,” said his wife, Tanya Scott. “When I'd ask him about it, he'd say, 'All you need to know is, it was bad. I don't like to think about the past, because I'm happy in the present and look forward to the future.' ”

Tragically, the man who overcame such a Dickensian background would be cut down on the most mundane of days, while engaged in his work on the side of the road.

Scott had just finished repairing a disabled tractor trailer in the breakdown lane of the Massachusetts Turnpike in Grafton when he was struck and killed by a delivery van on Dec. 8, 2009. He was 36. On Tuesday, a Central District Court jury found the driver of that van, Kenneth Lava, not guilty of vehicular homicide by driving negligently.

When the verdict was announced, Scott's widow burst into tears and ran from the courtroom into the lobby, where she threw up. She and many others who loved Scott say they're frustrated that no one will pay for their devastating loss, that the many, poignant impact statements written about him will never be heard, that the public will know Dennis Scott simply as a victim and not as the special man he was.

“Dennis was my hero,” wrote Dale Scott in his unread statement, describing a hellish upbringing of hunger and deprivation. “All the house money went to drugs and other things. It was horrible… We beat the statistics. We should have been something else and we weren't. Dennis is the reason why I'm such a good person. We were never taught right from wrong and good morals. But Dennis made the decision to be a good person. He saw how not to be. I idolized him so I wanted to be like him. He worked hard. He was good to people … Without Dennis, I'd be somebody else. To overcome those things and become the man he was was incredible.”

Dennis and Tanya met in 1998 and married in 2003. She described her husband as her soul mate and said she knew on their first date that she wanted to marry him.

“We laughed every day we were together,” she said in an interview. “He never judged or looked down on anyone. He was my everything. I didn't need anything else but him.”

They lived in Whitinsville but had bought a two-bedroom Cape in Putnam, Conn., four months before he was killed. She said her husband worked seven days a week and rarely drank alcohol. Instead, he liked to fish, watch movies and host cookouts for family and friends. The couple looked forward to having children. She said her husband would have made a wonderful father.

Now, Scott's widow wants the state to amend and increase awareness of the little-known “move over” law, passed in 2009, that requires motorists move to the left if an emergency vehicle is in the breakdown lane or the side of the road. The law did not apply to Dennis' accident, but Tanya Scott believes it should be expanded.

“It should apply to any car in the breakdown lane, whether it's a cop or not,” she said. “If people were more aware of the law, it might have made a difference to Dennis.”

The lawyer for Lava argued that the accident occurred because the victim, 6 feet tall and over 300 pounds, was partially in the roadway. The jury learned that Lava wasn't speeding and that he saw the tractor-trailer as he approached. One witness said he thought Lava was falling asleep because his delivery van drifted across the road into the breakdown line.

Lava was found responsible for a marked lanes violation and fined $100. In her impact statement, Tanya wrote of a future unfulfilled.

“We always said we wanted to grow old together,” she wrote. “That we would be that old couple walking down the street, holding hands.”

Elaine Thompson of the Telegram & Gazette staff contributed to this column.