Monday, January 26, 2015

AFTER FIVE HOURS OF DELIBERATION, JURORS STILL UNDECIDED ON FATE OF TRUCKER CHARGED IN DOUBLE-FATAL CRASH IN PENNSYLVANIA



AFTER FIVE HOURS OF DELIBERATION, JURORS STILL UNDECIDED ON FATE OF TRUCKER CHARGED IN DOUBLE-FATAL CRASH IN LANCASTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA





Firefighters work to free a victim trapped in an overturned car after a crash on Route 222 in Manheim Township in this file photo from 2012.

Monday, January 26, 2015

Lancaster County, PA:
 
After more than five hours of deliberations Monday, jurors still haven’t decided the fate of a trucker charged with causing a double-fatal crash in 2012.

The jury panel is deliberating following three days of testimony in the trial of 24-year-old Mawuyrayrassuna E. Noviho.

Noviho is charged with two counts of vehicular homicide for allegedly pulling onto the highway - at an extremely slow speed and without lights - into the path of Katie West's car.

West's Volkswagen collided with the truck, killing her husband, Joshua West, and their 2-year-old son Joshua "Charlie" West.

Deliberations began about 2 p.m. Lancaster County Judge David Ashworth sent the panel home at 7:30 p.m.

They will resume Tuesday morning.
While asking Ashworth questions on the law Monday evening, the foreman indicated the panel is split.
“We believe we are closer in our understanding of the facts of the case,” the foreman, in his 40’s, told the judge about 6:30 p.m. “We are still split, however.”
Prosecutors allege that Noviho, on a training license, was driving at 17 mph at the time of the collision.

Two eye witnesses, traveling behind the West car, testified that they didn't even see the truck until the collision, which flung the Volkswagen into the air, eventually landing on its roof.

First Assistant Todd E. Brown, in a closing argument Monday afternoon, said the time between the truck appearing on the highway and impact was "almost instantaneous."
Noviho's defense team revealed during testimony that Katie West had heroin in her system at the time of the crash.

In fact, a toxicologist testified, she used heroin an hour or two, at most, before the crash.
"Things don't just appear out of the darkness," defense lawyer Robert Daniels argued in closing, suggesting West passed out at the wheel. "We know she used heroin after she picked up her kids."

Mrs. West and her 4-year-old daughter survived the crash.
Brown countered in his closing that even a sober driver couldn't have avoided the slow truck.
"The heroin," he said, "it doesn't matter. There's no proof that, if she was high, it caused the crash."
Jurors began deliberations following closing arguments and Ashworth's instructions on the law.
Noviho, who was driving for Utah-based C.R. England, is free on unsecured bail.