I’d like to provide an update on this, if only to recognize the effort that folks made to come out to a ghost bike ride way out in Beaver County (which I so appreciated) and to let those folks know about how the outcome is evolving.

I’ve seen the police report. It took so very long for it to come out, but outside of the timeliness it’s everything you’d want a police report to be – detailed, thorough, specific.

The driver’s day reads like a Greek tragedy. At mid-day he won $1200 on a strip-ticket. I can imagine how that made his day. He went into Monaca to the Red-Wings shoe store and bought a new pair of boots. Then he drove south on 51 to a Crescent bar and had many beers and a few shots in three hours. He departed the bar, driving north on 51 to get to his house in Beaver.

His statement says, he saw something twinkling up ahead, he looked at the former mill site and reminisced about working there, he looked over his shoulder to change lanes and then hit the cyclist. He continued driving away. In about a mile there’s a bridge to the slag dump and an open parking area used by trucks, and he pulled over into that parking area.

People came upon the cyclist lying in the roadway. I heard the audio of two 911 calls, and it’s a terrible thing for the family to hear. Then there was another call. It seems like a few cars came upon the scene and rolled over the bicycle.

A Monaca police officer heard the radio calls and started driving south on 51 to assist with the scene, directing traffic etc. As he drove south he saw the pickup truck parked at the slag dump ramp with front-end damage, and circled and stopped. He spoke with the driver. He contacted the Aliquippa PD and they said, keep him there until we can get there. The Aliquippa PD administered the field sobriety test (which was failed), questioned the driver (who gave a pretty full account) and took the driver to the hospital for a blood test (which he failed).

Today was a suppression hearing before the trial begins. The defense presents two motions. One is to dismiss the charge of “homicide by vehicle, DUI related”. The other motion challenges the jurisdiction of the Monaca police officer to stop at a vehicle in Center Twp over a crash in Aliquippa. And if the officer had no jurisdiction, then the statements, the field test, and the blood test must be suppressed as coming from a poisoned tree.

The jurisdiction question was interesting. Monaca and Aliquippa do not have a reciprocal aid agreement. Aliquippa never put out a request for assistance. It seems like the Monaca officer overheard the radio messages and headed south to help. The defense says, Monaca and Aliquippa aren’t even neighboring jurisdictions – the officer was planning to go from Monaca, through Center Twp, through Hopewell Twp, to Aliquippa.

The defense points out, the Legislature doesn’t authorize municipal police to be roving officers wherever they go (like state police) – there are limits to their authority and jurisdiction, and the defense argues that the Monaca officer wasn’t legitimately in an official capacity when he stopped at the slag dump parking area.

The other motion was about the charge, “homicide by vehicle DUI related”. IANAL but the defense attorney argues, this charge requires three things: to be drunk, to cause a death and there has to be some other factor – evasive driving, high speed, some performance issue that shows how the Drunkedness leads to the Death. He says, there’s no evidence presented of impaired performance, but there’s a lot of mitigating factors – it was dark, it had rained, the cyclist was riding a girl’s bike, the reflectors had been removed, the cyclist wasn’t wearing a helmet. (in other words, the driver would have hit this cyclist if he were sober). The defense asks the court to remove the charge of “homicide by vehicle, DUI related”.

The prosecutor says, the evidence of impaired performance is that Banks is dead and the accused’s statements; further, the driver was operating on an approved bike route and there were signs about ShareTheRoad. Finally, it was Halloween and the driver should have been operating with additional caution because there could be people out trick-or-treating.

I was impressed at the hearing. Both the defense, prosecutor, and judge were intimately familiar with all the little details of the case. It was a dispassionate, professional slicing up of the events of the night. It was terrible for the family to sit through, but I thought both the prosecutor and the defense presented reasonable questions and the judge will announce their decisions in writing in a few weeks.

Trial is scheduled for Aug.20. I thought the proceedings were fair and thorough. I left a bit impressed at how the hearing went.

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