EASTHAMPTON — City native and Maine State Trooper Benjamin Campbell was killed in the line of duty on Wednesday morning after being struck by a rolling wheel that came off a logging truck on Interstate 95.
Campbell, 31, had pulled over to assist a car on the side of the highway in Hampden, Maine, when two wheels came off a passing logging truck. One rolled into the highway median and the other struck Campbell, according to Maine State Police. The incident occurred just after 7:30 a.m.
During a press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Maine State Police Col. John Cote said the incident could only be described as a “freak accident.” Campbell was traveling to a training assignment before pulling over to assist a driver who had spun out in the breakdown lane.
“He was a guy that was always going to see the good in people,” Cote said. “He cared, and that’s why he stopped today … He saw a person in need of assistance and that became his priority. He didn’t know any other way to do it.”
Campbell was pronounced dead at Northern Light Eastern Medical Center in Bangor, Maine. Cote said the department’s commercial vehicle unit will investigate the cause of the wheels coming off the logging truck.
Campbell served for 6½ years on the state police force. He grew up in Easthampton, graduated from Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School in Northampton, and received an associate degree in criminal justice from Holyoke Community College. He was a graduate of Westfield State University.
Maine State Police contacted Massachusetts State Police to notify them of Campbell’s death on Wednesday, according to Easthampton Police Chief Robert Alberti. Massachusetts State Police, along with Easthampton’s police chaplain, the Rev. Bill Hamilton, notified Campbell’s parents and grandparents of his death.
“Any time a police officer is killed in the line of duty, it’s a complete tragedy,” Alberti said on Wednesday. “It hits close to home when it’s a member of our community. Our deepest thoughts and condolences go out to the Campbell family.”
Alberti noted that Campbell was well-known in the police department as many went to school with him and that a large contingent of the Easthampton Police Department will attend his funeral.
Campbell would have turned 32 on Monday. He is survived by his wife, Hilary, and his 6-month-old son, Everett, who live in Millinocket, Maine. His parents and grandparents living in Easthampton were taken up to Maine in a collaborative effort by Massachusetts State Police and Maine State Police on Wednesday, according to Cote.
Cote called Campbell “one of our very best” members of the Maine State Police Department. Campbell joined the state police in 2012 as a trooper assigned to Penobscot County. In 2017, Campbell was promoted to a detective and joined the department’s polygraph unit, according to Cote.
Campbell drove an unmarked Explorer SUV on Wednesday morning, and he had his vehicle’s police lights on while pulled over. The person Campbell was assisting received no injuries as a result of the logging truck tire.
“It’s left us all shaken and it defies explanation,” Cote said of the first death of an officer in the line of duty the department has experienced in over a decade.
A former teammate from Easthampton’s Junior League remembered Campbell as the best first baseman he’d ever seen in his life.
“I’m just in shock,” said Drew Dombkowski. The two played together on the Junior League baseball team growing up in the early 2000s and they were both first basemen.
“He was definitively a role model,” Dombkowski said.
“He was just so amazing to watch. He was always smiling, nothing could rattle him. He was so composed, on and off the field.”
Campbell’s high school baseball coach, Ed Shaughnessy, said he started choking up when the 4 o’clock news on television showed Campbell’s death.
“He was one heck of a baseball player besides a wonderful boy,” Shaughnessy said. Shaughnessy coached baseball at Smith Voc from 1967 to 2012 and called Campbell “one of my top hitters.”
Even before Campbell set foot in the high school, Shaughnessy was well aware of Campbell’s talent.
In 2001, Campbell led his Junior League team to victory over New Jersey’s state champions in the opening game of the Eastern Regional Tournament in Marlboro, New Jersey. Campbell hit a grand slam in the bottom of the eighth inning to give Easthampton a 9-5 win over Toms River East, a team that regularly appeared in the Little League World Series.
Shaughnessy recalled seeing Campbell for the last time shortly after he graduated from Westfield State. Campbell was applying to become a Maine state trooper, and he told Shaughnessy that someone would be contacting him for a referral.
“He was enjoyable to coach and never gave any kind of grief,” Shaughnessy said.
Luis Fieldman can be reached at lfieldman@gazettenet.com