A former New York State trooper was convicted of manslaughter this week for his role in the death of an 11-year-old girl whose family’s car he had rammed during a high-speed chase on the New York State Thruway.
The former trooper, Christopher Baldner, 47, was found guilty of second-degree manslaughter on Friday by a jury in Ulster County, capping his second criminal trial in connection with the car chase in December 2020, which killed Monica Goods, of Brooklyn.
During the first criminal trial last fall, Mr. Baldner faced charges of manslaughter, second-degree murder and reckless endangerment. But those proceedings ending in a mistrial after a jury acquitted him on the latter two charges and failed to agree on whether he had committed manslaughter. Mr. Baldner’s second trial, on the manslaughter charge alone, resulted in a verdict this week.
Mr. Baldner now faces a maximum term of five to 15 years in prison. He will return to court for his sentencing on June 2.
“In a tragedy like this, there is no real justice, because our loved ones never come back,” Michelle Surrency, Monica’s mother, said in an interview on Saturday, speaking by phone as she traveled to a cemetery to visit her daughter’s grave. “But there is accountability, and I’m glad that accountability is finally happening after 62 months,” she said.
Letitia James, the attorney general of New York whose office prosecuted the case, offered condolences to Monica’s family in a statement on Friday, even as she announced the conviction. “While nothing can bring Monica back, this verdict is some semblance of justice for her loved ones,” Ms. James said.
Anthony Ricco, Mr. Baldner’s lawyer, could not immediately be reached for comment on Saturday.
The conviction this week comes more than five years after Mr. Baldner pulled the car Monica was riding in over for speeding in what would become a fatal encounter. On the night of Dec. 22, 2020, Monica’s father, Tristin Goods, was driving Monica, her sister, Tristina, 12, and his partner, April, to visit relatives for Christmas.
It was a little before midnight when Mr. Baldner pulled the family’s Dodge Journey S.U.V. over for speeding outside Kingston, about an hour and a half north of New York City. In the exchange that followed, Mr. Goods began to argue with Mr. Baldner. Mr. Goods then asked to speak to a supervisor, at which point Mr. Baldner responded by squirting pepper spray into the car.
Fearing for his safety, Mr. Goods drove off at a high speed, his lawyer, Joseph O’Connor, has said. Mr. Baldner followed, reaching a top speed of 130 miles per hour before twice ramming his car into the Goodses’ vehicle, prosecutors said. The force of the second impact sent the car careening into a center guard rail, where it flipped and eventually landed on its roof.
Monica was ejected from the car and fatally injured. Her father, his partner and her 12-year-old sister survived.
The episode was investigated by the attorney general’s office, which handles cases in which police officers cause the death of a civilian. Almost a year later, in October 2021, Mr. Baldner was charged in a grand jury indictment with murder, manslaughter and reckless endangerment.
His trial began in the fall of 2025, making him the first New York State trooper to be tried for murder that resulted from a vehicle chase, according to The Times Union.
Last November, the jury found Mr. Baldner not guilty of the murder and reckless endangerment charges, both of which would have required finding that he had acted with “depraved indifference to human life.” But after an additional day of deliberations, the jurors failed to agree on whether he had committed manslaughter, which would only have required that he recklessly caused Monica’s death.
The judge in the case, Justice Bryan Rounds of Ulster County Court, declared a mistrial on the manslaughter charge. A subsequent trial began last month.
Mr. O’Connor, Mr. Goods’s lawyer, declined on Saturday to comment on Mr. Baldner’s conviction.
Even before the encounter with the Goods, Mr. Baldner, a 19-year veteran of the State Police, had a history of similar collisions.
In the indictment, the trooper faced three additional counts of reckless endangerment for a separate crash in the Kingston area in 2019 in which he rammed his vehicle into a car. He was acquitted of those charges during the first trial. The attorney general’s office investigated another case, in 2017, in which Mr. Baldner struck a car in the same area, but ultimately did not charge him in the indictment.
Mr. Baldner was placed on desk duty after the 2020 crash that killed Monica and suspended without pay after his indictment in 2021. He retired in 2022.
On Saturday, Sanford Rubenstein, a lawyer for Ms. Surrency, said that he hoped the conviction would serve as an example to other police officers who violated the law.
Ms. Surrency added that the death of her daughter and the ordeal of the two trials had been an ongoing source of pain for the family.
“He still gets to go home to his children and I have to visit mine at the cemetery,” she said of Mr. Baldner.
Andy Newman contributed reporting.
Maia Coleman is a reporter for The Times covering the New York Police Department and criminal justice in the New York area.
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