Photo courtesy Jill Marie Whelan

As people across the country gathered on the streets today in a show of support for Karen Read, a group of Lowell and Dracut, Massachusetts residents joined them in the national stand out day.

A passerby on Lakeview Avenue stopped to snap a photo that he shared with InsideLowell, after alerting us of the rally.

The small, but vocal, gathering near the high school was organized by Dracut resident Lizzie Kenney Smith. The group topped out at nine people from Noon-2pm.

Another one of the attendees, Jill Whalen of Lowell, posted photos on Facebook and also shared them with InsideLowell.

The town of Dracut was one of 40 cities across America to rally today. According to a report on WJAR-TV in Providence, states as far away as California, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, and South Carolina held gatherings, to go along with one in Warwick, Rhode Island.

Read is accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O’Keefe, by backing her Lexus SUV into him and leaving him for dead in the early morning hours of January 29, 2022.

Read’s defense team contends O’Keefe was killed by someone at the house of another Boston officer, Brian Albert, where she says she dropped him off after a night of drinking with friends.

The case exploded onto the national scene after local blogger Turtleboy, who runs the site TB Daily News, began drawing attention to the events in question. Eventually, media from around the country joined others on social media in covering the story, which has also been the subject of numerous investigative news features.

The high profile trial last year led to a hung jury and now a retrial, which is scheduled to begin this Tuesday, April 1.