Karen Read trial: Optician gets harassed over her punny 'FRAMED' license plate
Middleboro optician Lauren Downey was thrilled to get a customized license plate in 2022 that read "FRAMED" − a fun reference to her longtime profession.
Her plate would come to have an entirely different meaning in 2025, as tens of thousands of viewers across the country tuned in to the retrial of Karen Read, a Massachusetts woman accused of killing her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O’Keefe. Prosecutors claimed Read hit O’Keefe, 46, with her SUV outside a Canton home in January of 2022 and left him to die in the snow.
Read’s defense team said she was framed − a word that her supporters readily adopted as a slogan seen on signs and T-shirts to protest her innocence. It also happens to still be Downey’s license plate.
Downey, who owns optical shops in Middleboro and Plymouth, said over the past few months, she’s been harassed by people who assume the plate is a reference to the Read trial.
“In the last couple months, it’s gotten scary,” she told The Enterprise on Wednesday, June 18. “I can see cars in my rear-view mirror change lanes and rapidly speed up. They’ve blocked off intersections and driven over medians to give me the middle finger," she said. "They yell expletives out the window."
Her car has also been keyed twice, she said.
Downey said she has also received unwanted attention from Read supporters, with people approaching her family at restaurants and trying to give her high fives.
One day, she had six or seven interactions with people on both sides who assumed her plate referenced Read’s trial.
Downey said she is not invested in watching the trial herself, but she hopes her plate will go back to its intended meaning when the trial concludes.
While Downey can laugh about the license plate mix-up, she said at the end of the day, no matter who's side you are on, a man lost his life.
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