B4 Metro The Boston Globe WEDNESDAY, MARCH 11, 2020
By Travis Andersen
GLOBE STAFF
A Rhode Island man ac-
cused of posing as an Uber driv-
er and raping a woman he
picked up outside of a Boston
bar videotaped the assault on
his phone, telling the severely
intoxicated victim, “Raise your
eyebrow if you’re all right,” legal
filings allege.
The woman said nothing in
response to the suspect, Alvin
R. Campbell Jr., 39, “except to
cough and gag during the as-
saults,” said a document prose-
cutors filed in Suffolk Superior
Court, where Campbell, of
Cumberland, R.I., pleaded not
guilty on Monday to charges of
aggravated rape, kidnapping,
indecent assault and battery,
and photographing an unsus-
pecting nude person.
Bail was set at $250,
cash. A lawyer for Campbell de-
clined to comment. Campbell is
the brother of Boston City
Councilor Andrea Campbell,
who previously told the Globe
she’s “extremely heartbroken
and saddened and devastated
by these allegations” and
“thinking about the victim who
had the courage to come for-
ward.”
The woman’s harrowing or-
deal began Dec. 6, shortly be-
fore midnight, when she left a
downtown bar and summoned
an Uber driver on her phone,
said the prosecutors’ statement
of the case. The driver arrived,
waited, and then left without
her, according to the statement.
The document did not say why
the driver took off.
As the driver left, Campbell
pulled up in front of the bar in a
black SUV, the statement said.
He looked like the Uber driver
who had left, the document
said, and flashed his headlights
at the woman, who got into the
vehicle after a short interaction
with Campbell through a pas-senger-side window.
She lost consciousness in the
back seat, according to prosecu-
tors, and woke up hours later
on the morning of Dec. 7 in
Campbell’s apartment, with
pain in her groin and an injury
to her chest. Campbell drove
her to a CVS and dropped her
off, prosecutors said. The wom-
an returned home, went to a
hospital for a sexual assault
evaluation, and reported what
happened to Boston police.
Detectives identified Camp-
bell’s vehicle from video surveil-
lance footage and conducted a
forensic review of the woman’s
phone to track her movements
after she left the bar. The re-
view, prosecutors said, showed
that after getting into the SUV,
she was taken to a spot near her
Boston residence, where she re-
mained for about an hour.
A search warrant of Camp-
bell’s phone revealed what al-
legedly occurred during that
time period.
“Campbell documented hisown crimes by taking video
clips of himself as he groped
and ultimately raped the un-
conscious victim in the back
seat of the SUV between 12:
and 1:00 a.m., while it was
parked near her home,” the
statement said. “The clips
showed her both clothed and
naked. Campbell addressed her
by name and commented
crudely about her body. He said
at one point, ‘Raise your eye-
brow if you’re all right,’ and lat-
er ‘Do you want to go upstairs
to your house or come to my
house?’ "
Prosecutors said the woman
only coughed and gagged in re-
sponse, and Campbell took pic-
tures of her license.
The review of the woman’s
phone showed she was driven
from the location outside of her
apartment down interstates 93
and 95 to Cumberland, R.I., the
statement said. Prosecutors
noted that a fitness app on her
phone indicated that she had
taken no steps during her timewith Campbell, meaning she
had to be carried from the SUV
into his residence.
Police canvassed the area
and located Campbell’s vehicle
in the driveway of his Pleasant
Street apartment in Cumber-
land, according to court papers,
which said swabs from the
woman’s hospital exam
matched Campbell’s DNA pro-
file.
Court-authorized searches
of Campbell’s vehicle and resi-
dence yielded a luggage tag
bearing the woman’s name;
Uber decals in the SUV, along
with business cards with Camp-
bell’s transportation company
on the front and Uber codes on
the back; and a card with the
woman’s name and phone
number, legal filings show.
Prosecutors said Campbell’s
prior record includes a three- to
five-year state prison sentence
in 2000 for armed assault with
intent to rob and other charges;
a 57-month federal prison sen-
tence in 2006 for being a felonin possession of a firearm; and
a seven-year state prison term
in 2014 for a separate firearm
conviction.
Campbell’s next hearing is
April 7.
Prosecutors alleged in a Jan-
uary court hearing that a DNA
match also was found between
Campbell and a sexual assault
in Medford, which Middlesex
County authorities would inves-
tigate. In a court filing Monday
in the Suffolk case, prosecutors
referenced Lexington police re-
ports of Campbell’s “alleged
criminal behavior” on Dec. 8,
one day after he dropped off the
woman he allegedly kidnapped
in Boston.
A spokeswoman for Middle-
sex District Attorney Marian T.
Ryan’s office didn’t immediate-
ly respond to a request for com-
ment Tuesday.Travis Andersen can be reached
at [email protected].
Follow him on Twitter
@AGlobe.Suspectinkidnap,rapevideotapedassaults,filesallege
Victimwastaken
outsidebarincity
By John R. Ellement
GLOBE STAFF
The new Orange Line trains
recently taken out of service for
the second time will not be
back on the tracks in the imme-
diate future as engineers work
to ensure a proposed fix that
actually works, according to a
top MBTA official.
The T withdrew the new
trains, built by Chinese-owned
CCRC, on March 3 and had also
removed them from use last
fall. In both instances, the T
was concerned that the cars
had some flaws that needed to
be addressed before riders
were allowed to get back on
them.
Speaking to the Fiscal and
Management Control Board on
Monday, the MBTA’s deputy
general manager, Jeffrey D.
Gonneville, said that engineers
from the T, CCRC, and the com-
pany that made the part in
question plan to install a pro-
posed remedy this week. The
fix would have to be tested be-
fore it’s finally made part of the
cars going forward, he said.
“It’s not the same issue that
we were seeing the last time,’’
Gonneville said. Engineers
“worked to come up with a ret-
rofit or modification of the par-
ticular part.”
According to T spokeswom-
an Lisa Battiston, the part at is-
sue in the current examination
of the trains is the bolster,
which she described in an e-
mail as “a steel center beam be-
tween the side frames of the
bottom ‘truck’ of each car. It al-
lows the truck of the car to ro-
tate as it navigates turns in the
track.”
Gonneville said that even if
the test is successful, there are
no immediate plans to return
the new cars to service.
“We are not ready to com-
mit to when the trains will be
going back into service,’’ he
said. “We are optimistic it
won’t be much longer or for as
long as it was the first time.”
He said that any change en-
gineers settle on will be incor-
porated into the Orange Line
fleet of cars and into the Red
Line cars that are on order with
CCRC.John R. Ellement can be
reached at
[email protected].
Follow him on Twitter
@JREbosglobe.Orange
Line’s
newcars
stillout
Tsaysitwantsto
besurefixworks
Lamberty, an Eversource
spokesman, said in an e-mail
Tuesday. The project is sched-
uled to go before the state’s En-
ergy Facilities Siting Board on
Wednesday, which could give
the proposal a crucial approval
at its meeting.
Walkey, of GreenRoots,
questions whether the commu-
nity needs the project. He said
the only entity with the infor-
mation required to document
the need for the substation is
Eversource, “who stands to
profit from putting this in.”
“And their data, they won’t
share with us,” he said. “They
just tell us to take it on faith.”
He said Condor Street,
which runs along the site,
flooded last summer; he re-
called helping push someone’s
uSUBSTATION
Continued from Page B
car out of the floodwaters after
the vehicle’s engine got wet. He
also said that during the 2018
“bombogenesis” police shut the
street down on multiple days
because of flooding. Floods, he
said, could shut down the sub-
station or, worse, cause a fire or
explosion, with ratepayers foot-
ing the repair bill.
The Energy Facilities Siting
Board has the power to waive
local zoning mandates, Walkey
said. If that board gives the
project the go-ahead, Walkey’s
group plans to appeal the deci-
sion to the Supreme Judicial
Court. A permit from the De-
partment of Environmental
Protection is also needed.
Under the proposal, the East
Eagle Street substation would
be connected to existing substa-
tions in Everett and Chelsea via
transmission lines that run un-der Chelsea Creek, an estuary of
the harbor. A knoll separates
the site from the creek. Across
the street are a playground,
basketball courts, and a ball
field. On the other side of the
site, a little more than a football
field away, sit large tanks con-
taining jet fuel.
Sandra Aleman Nijjar, an
East Boston mother of two who
runs a soup kitchen and works
in a restaurant, is among those
unhappy with Eversource’s
plans, which she says do noth-
ing to mitigate flooding con-
cerns. She also doesn’t like the
site’s proximity to the creek,
park, and jet fuel tanks.
“I just don’t think it’s a good
idea for a number of reasons,”
she said Tuesday.
Lamberty, the Eversource
spokesman, said the substa-
tion’s design exceeds local andfederal flood-elevation stan-
dards. He added that the struc-
ture would be built to with-
stand 100- and 500-year flood-
waters and would take into
account rising sea levels.
There are also gripes about
the way the permitting process
has played out, with project op-
ponents saying that interpreta-
tion services at some of the pub-
lic meetings have been inade-
quate and that outreach to East
Boston’s Spanish-speaking
community has been lacking.
Over 55 percent of East Boston
identifies as Hispanic or Latino.
Paula Garcia, a bilingual en-
ergy analyst for the Union of
Concerned Scientists, called the
project “very risky for the entire
community.” She said that by
the century’s end, the site will
flood about 26 times each year.
“There is a safety risk be-cause water plus electricity
equals fire,” Garcia said.
Lamberty defended the utili-
ty’s outreach, saying multiple
public hearings were held, with
full translation services. He said
that without a new substation
by 2022, electric demand will
exceed the capacity of an exist-
ing Chelsea substation that
serves East Boston.
City Councilor Lydia Ed-
wards wrote in February to a
state official that the permitting
for the proposal has “inade-
quately addressed site alterna-
tives, energy alternatives, the
environmental justice obliga-
tions of the Commonwealth
and the language access needs
of my constituents.”Danny McDonald
can be reached at
[email protected].Fresh Slate campaign.
Voters decide on ward com-
mittee members every four
years, during a presidential
election, and can vote for indi-
vidual candidates or for a slate
of candidates who organize as
one team.
Members of each Fresh Slate
campaign painted the previous
ward committees as closed off
from the communities they
serve — something they hope to
change.
“There’s more attention be-
ing paid to the infrastructure of
the Democratic Party and how
it works and who it’s working
for,” said Brian Gannon, 46, a
business analyst who was on
the Fresh Slate bloc for East
Boston’s Democratic ward com-
mittee.
He said the hope was for
there to be “more independent
representation in our neighbor-
uWARDS
Continued from Page B
hood from our party.”
Elsewhere in the city, those
trying to change the makeup of
ward committees had less suc-
cess.
In Ward 9, for instance,
which includes parts of the
South End and Roxbury, three
candidates from the bloc of
nine challengers landed seats
on the committee. In Ward 3,
which stretches from the North
End to Chinatown and includes
South End and West End neigh-
borhoods, none of the five chal-
lengers secured posts on the 35-
seat body.
Segun Idowu, a 31-year-old
from Hyde Park who works in
the nonprofit space, was among
the slate of challenger candi-
dates that captured Ward 18.
He said he never knew previ-
ous ward committees to hold
publicized meetings about how
they planned to approach dele-
gate conventions, where the
party chooses its platform. Hesaid the Fresh Slate candidates
in his ward ran to “establish
transparency in the process and
to help educate voters.”
“We have just never seen the
engagement that we’ve needed
to see,” he said.
To have challenger slates
with a large number of candi-
dates is unusual, said City
Councilor Lydia Edwards.
“I have never seen it done
before,” said Edwards, who was
part of the winning Eastie Fresh
Slate bloc.
Councilor Michelle Wu, who
was already a committee mem-
ber but joined a new group of
candidates in Ward 18, con-
curred, saying, “We haven’t had
multiple options for ward com-
mittee slates in Boston for a
long time.”
“What it does show is that
more voices from the communi-
ty are getting involved,” she
said.
Committees are becomingmore reflective of the commu-
nities they represent, said Ed-
wards. The effort comes
months after Bostonians elect-
ed the most diverse City Coun-
cil in their history.
Gretchen Van Ness, of Hyde
Park, said voters in her ward
voted for a committee that
“promised to have a lot of meet-
ings, promised to have inclu-
sion.”“Certainly these are new
voices that are taking on chal-
lenges of creating a ward com-
mittee that is reflective of Ward
18,” Van Ness said.
Jonathan Rodrigues, 30, a
union organizer from Mattapan
who was elected on the Ward
18 Fresh Slate, said the previ-
ous ward committee failed to
explain its function to the com-
munity. The old guard, he said,
“let their guard down.”
“For too long, our ward com-
mittees have been staid atmo-
spheres,” he said. “Kind of bor-
ing and not engaging.”
“We don’t want change done
to us," he added. "We want to
be at the table.”Milton J. Valencia of Globe staff
contributed to this report.
Danny McDonald
can be reached at
[email protected].
Follow him on Twitter
@Danny__McDonald.Eversourcesubstationwouldfaceflooding,criticssay
Newwardcommitteemembersreflectachangingcity
LYDIAEDWARDS‘Ihave
neverseen
itdone
before,’
thecitycouncilor
saysofthepushto
runsomany
candidates.
‘Weareoptimistic
itwon’tbemuch
longerorforas
longasitwasthe
firsttime.’
JEFFREY D. GONNEVILLE
MBTA deputy general managerPHOTOS BY DAVID L. RYAN/GLOBE STAFF
IN BLOOM— As of Tuesday night, organizers of the Boston Flower & Garden Show said it will open as planned at 10 a.m. Wednesday. They said
they have not been told that holding the show is unsafe. Aileen Green watered flowers as she prepared for the opening. Daisies (top left) and
hydrangeas are among the flowers that will be on display.