Family Members Lament Light Sentence for Driver Who Killed Tamar Vishlitzky

This story originally appeared on Brookline.News, an independent, nonprofit news organization dedicated to providing comprehensive local news coverage for Brookline.

A Billerica man pleaded guilty on Thursday to motor vehicle homicide for killing Tamar Vishlitzky, a long-time Brookline resident who had recently moved to Concord, when he hit her with his car in a Bedford crosswalk in 2024.

Joshua Quimby, 35, received a two-year suspended sentence from Concord District Court Judge Sharon Lalli, which means that he will serve no time in prison if he does not violate his probation.

Judge Lalli also ordered Quimby to conduct 100 hours of community service and suspended his license for 15 more years.

Police and prosecutors allege that Quimby’s license had already been suspended at the time he killed Vishlitzky in 2024.

Police also alleged that Quimby was distracted around the time of the crash and had been using a messaging app and YouTube Music on his phone. 

Vishlitzky’s mother and sister, both of whom live in Brookline, said outside the courtroom that they were disappointed by the sentence. 

“We’re devastated,” said her sister, Ruthie Vishlitzky. “But I think we knew going in, having learned through the process that the maximum was so unbelievably low, that we were bracing for disappointment.”

The maximum sentence for motor vehicle homicide in Massachusetts is two-and-a-half years incarceration.

Vishlitzky, who was 53, lived in Brookline for many years. She raised two daughters, who attended Brookline public schools. She was a single mother and worked as a psychotherapist with an office in Brookline. 

Vishlitzky moved to Concord around the end of the pandemic and was settling into what family members called a new phase of her life when she was killed. 

On July 20, 2024, she was walking her bike in the crosswalk where the Reformatory Branch Rail Trail crosses Concord Road when Quimby, who was traveling at more than 40 miles per hour, crashed into her.

Police charged Quimby, a food service worker, with homicide in August 2025, more than a year later, after an investigation that found that he was using his phone and had not braked at all before running over Vishlitzky in the crosswalk.

At the hearing, Quimby’s attorney Michael Contant said that Quimby had taken full responsibility for what was a “tragic accident” and asked the judge for a sentence that included no jail time. Quimby did not comment after the hearing.

In victim impact statements before the sentencing, Vishlitzky’s family described suffering from PTSD and losing a loving family member. They called for steeper consequences for Quimby. 

Vishlitzky had been with her daughter Danielle’s partner Gerardo Zelaya when she was killed. Zelaya told the judge that he had been planning to ask for her blessing to propose to Danielle that day. Instead, he watched her take her last breaths and had to be the one to tell Danielle and her sister, Halle, what had happened to their mother. 

Vishlitzky’s mother, Mareska, who has lived in Brookline since the 1980s, noted that Tamar was one of nine people killed by distracted driving on that same day across the United States. 

“The community needs protection,” she said. 

Ruthie Vishlitzky said that she feels there is a lack of regulation and insufficient consequences for distracted driving. 

“We all are driving around with distraction machines, and so there’s just a general lack of safety everywhere, regardless of how well positioned signs may be,” she said. “But it also feels like Massachusetts specifically has such a lack of consequences. So if we’re all at risk of possibly running people over, and there’s also no consequences for doing so, and there’s no regulation for the technology to help us all snap to it. Where does that leave us?” 

The site of the crash has also been the subject of debates over safety. In 2022, Bedford Town Meeting rejected a project that would have upgraded the Reformatory Branch Rail Trail with a grade-separated underpass under Concord Road.

In an obituary, her family wrote that Tamar “was a deeply sensitive person and her soul had the depths of the ocean. She created beauty in the world with her unique creativity and aesthetics. She was also immensely empathetic and felt deeply the horrors and hardships of others in the world.” 

She had a “first career” as an artist before becoming a therapist and psychoanalyst.  

“Her sudden and violent demise came as she was beginning a new and exciting chapter – one she had finally entered into with more ease, confidence, wisdom and connection – has left her family and community profoundly devastated, heartbroken, and aching with the chasm of her loss,” the obituary read.