BARNSTABLE, Mass. — A Cape Cod man is set to be arraigned on Wednesday for manslaughter in the 2024 death of his mother, who formerly worked as a librarian at the Sandwich Public Library.
Thomas Hayes, 23, of Sandwich, has been indicted by a Barnstable grand jury, Cape and Islands District Attorney Robert Galibois said Friday. He is charged with manslaughter and assault and battery on a person 60 or older or disabled causing serious bodily injury.
Hayes is facing the charges in connection with the July 2024 death of his mother, Colleen Hayes, who worked as a reference librarian at Sandwich Public Library for several years, according to the district attorney’s office and her obituary.
Prosecutors said Colleen Hayes suffered a broken neck before she died.
Thomas Hayes is scheduled to be arraigned on Wednesday morning in Barnstable Superior Court, according to the clerk’s office. He is currently being held at Barnstable County Correctional Facility.
In the late hours of July 24, 2024, police and paramedics responded to a 911 call from a home in Sandwich, Galibois said.
When first responders arrived, they found an unconscious 71-year-old woman, later identified as Colleen Hayes, on the ground in the second-floor bedroom and bleeding from a laceration to her head, Galibois said.
Investigators later learned the injured woman was Hayes’ mother, Galibois said.
Hayes told the 911 operator and police that he had pushed the woman and that she had fallen to the floor, prosecutors said. She was taken by ambulance to Cape Cod Hospital with a head laceration and a broken neck.
She later died at the hospital on July 30, 2024, Galibois said.
At the time of this incident, Thomas Hayes was on probation out of the Barnstable District Court. He was sentenced to 1 year at the Barnstable House of Correction for violating his probation, Galibois said.
Falmouth Attorney Drew Segadelli, who is representing Thomas Hayes, said Tuesday that his client is not guilty of the charges he is facing.
Thomas Hayes, a former student athlete at Sandwich High School who went on to attend college in Rhode Island, has been held at Barnstable County Correctional Facility since the incident last July, Segadelli said.
“He’s been unfairly treated,” Segadelli said.
Segadelli said he hopes to get his client “out on a fair bail.”
“He does not need any more loss of liberty. His incarceration is wholly unequitable,” Segadelli said.
Segadelli said on the night of the incident, Thomas Hayes was trying to assist his mother, who had been drinking “significantly.” Segadelli claimed Colleen Hayes was “maybe twice the legal limit to drive an automobile” on that night.
“He just simply wanted to help her to bed and then this came about. No there wasn’t any violent acts or any of that, not by mother or him or anything. But there was a push and a stumble,” Segadelli said.
Segadelli said Colleen Hayes had other medical concerns. “She wasn’t an agile person,” he said.
According to her obituary, Colleen Sinnott Hayes of Sandwich worked as a paralegal for several law firms in Providence, Rhode Island after earning associate’s and bachelor’s degrees from Johnson and Wales University.
She later changed careers from paralegal to law librarian, her obituary states. She received her master’s degree in library science degree from the University of Rhode Island after two years of attending classes at night and on weekends.
She worked as a law librarian at several firms.
In 2003, she and her husband moved to Sandwich, where she took a position as reference librarian at the Sandwich Public Library, her obituary states. She retired from the library in 2019.
After her retirement, she worked part time at the Sandwich Council on Aging, and also filled in as a substitute librarian at the Sandwich Public Library.
“Colleen enjoyed reading, especially historical fiction and new fiction, travel, especially around Cape Cod and New England as well as to Ireland, walks in her neighborhood and around the town, seeing people at the library, and spending time with family and friends,” her obituary states.
Sandwich Police and the State Police Detectives Unit assigned to Galibois’ office investigated the Hayes case.
In a separate case, a Martha’s Vineyard woman was also charged with manslaughter last week after a toddler died on Wednesday, nearly one week after the child she was babysitting was found unresponsive in her SUV.
Prosecutors said the boy and another child were left unattended in the vehicle for hours.
Aimee Cotton, 41, of Oak Bluffs, Martha’s Vineyard, was arraigned on the manslaughter charge in Edgartown District Court on Thursday, Galibois said.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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