For a moment after the blue lights of Deputy Anthony Hovey’s cruiser appeared in his rear view mirror on the night of Jan. 17, Devin Betty seemed to slow down and pull to the side of the road.

Then, for reasons that will likely never be known, Betty, 24, of Buxton, sped off, accelerating away from the cruiser and down Route 115, toward the intersection with the Varney Mill Road in Windham. It was a decision that would cost him his life.

Betty was trying to pass three vehicles, now at a rate of speed faster than the 61 mph in a 50 mph zone that led Hovey to turn on his lights in the first place. When a car approached in the other direction, Betty had nowhere to go. The last thing Hovey saw were the headlights of Betty’s Nissan Maxima pointing back toward him, then a plume of snow and debris.

Betty’s car apparently spun, then hit a tree, tearing the car in two. The passenger compartment was found about 100 feet from the tree, while the rest of the vehicle sat near the site of the impact. Betty was pronounced dead at the scene.

In a matter of mere seconds, his wife was left without a husband, his two young boys without their father, and his family with nothing but memories and unanswerable questions of why Betty fled.

“They don’t know what happened. He made a stupid decision,” said Betty’s aunt, Cheryl Ranks of Buxton. “It’s just one stupid mistake, and his family has to pay for it.”

Betty had purchased the car earlier that day in Veazie, near Bangor, and was on his way home to his wife, Nancy, and two boys, Ryan, 4, and Landon, 2. The car was not registered, and Betty had attached illegal plates for the ride home, Ranks said. When he saw the lights, he must have been scared that his ruse would be discovered, that the offense would threaten his job as a copier technician, she said – that’s the only way it makes any sense.

“He was afraid of losing his job. That is the reason why we can come up with that he would do this,” said Ranks.

Law enforcement officials are unsure as well as to why Betty failed to pull over, said Chief Deputy Kevin Joyce of the Cumberland County Sheriff’s Office.

“We’re really not sure. We believe the car was not registered, and of course you had the speed,” said Joyce.

An investigation into the accident, including a reconstruction, will likely take two to three weeks, and results of a blood alcohol test are not yet available.

“We don’t know if that was a factor,” Joyce said.

In the meantime, Ranks said, Betty’s family is concerned what people will think about the crash and surrounding circumstances. They’ll hear about the accident and quickly dismiss him as a wild kid unaware of his own mortality, she said. They’ll hear about the accident and assume he was a criminal.

But nothing could be further from the truth, Ranks said. Betty was a family man, devoted to his young boys, who often had trouble sleeping if he was not around. He didn’t do drugs and had only an occasional beer, “nothing like you hear with other kids,” Ranks said. “If we were at a party, he’d be the one taking care of the kids, playing with the kids.”

Besides his father, who lives in Raymond, Betty’s large family is centered in Buxton. Betty was always there for his family, always ready to pitch in wherever and whenever someone needed help.

Said his cousin Cheryl Riddell, “He was a great person. It just boggles us. He was the best father you could imagine. His boys were everything to him.”

The family is now together again, leaning on each other, this time to mourn the loss of one of their own. Talking over the last few days, they have not come any closer to reconciling the Devin they knew with the one who made that fateful decision just after 9:20 Saturday night.

A deputy’s decision to chase a vehicle is based on the danger that vehicle poses to other vehicles on the road, Joyce said. Once Betty sped up and began driving erratically, Hovey had to follow, especially since Betty turned right onto Route 115, heading toward busy North Windham.

“If he had hit someone, then the public would have been asking, ‘Why didn’t you go after him?'” said Joyce, acknowledging the difficult and quick decisions that must be made during a chase.

“The first car in the chase has the ability to pull over at any time,” Joyce continued. “He chose not to do this.”

Devin Betty