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Trial opens with evidence on deadly Youngstown crash
YOUNGSTOWN
The crash that killed Pamela Kennedy was a powerful, high-speed impact that broke a utility pole and propelled the car in which she was riding an additional 100 feet before it overturned, an accident reconstructionist said.
“It’s a significant impact because it is a large vehicle. It’s a rather strong vehicle,” Trooper Christopher Jester of the Ohio State Highway Patrol testified Thursday in the jury trial of Christopher Kelso on charges of aggravated vehicular homicide and aggravated vehicular assault.
Kelso’s trial is before Judge Lou A. D’Apolito of Mahoning County Common Pleas Court. If convicted, Kelso faces up to 13 years in prison.
Jester said the 1999 Ford Crown Victoria Kelso was driving displayed a crush zone from the pole impact extending 3 to 4 feet into the right side of the vehicle. “The vehicle itself was actually bent around the pole,” Jester said.
Jester wasn’t at the scene the night of the 2:05 a.m. Feb. 3, 2010, crash on Wilson Avenue near Prospect Avenue, which trapped the three occupants inside the overturned car, including Kennedy, 28, of Boardman, who was a front-seat passenger.
But, based on his analysis of the crash reports and photos, his observation of the wrecked car, and his daytime visit to the scene after the crash, Jester estimated the westbound car’s speed at 39 to 53 mph when it hit the pole.
On her report, Youngstown Police Sgt. Patricia Garcar, who initially investigated the one-car crash, estimated the car’s speed at 60 mph in a 35 mph zone.
Javier Colon, 31, of Youngstown, the back-seat passenger, told Garcar in his witness statement that he had asked Kelso to slow down when he saw the speedometer hit 85 mph before the crash.
Another witness, Eugene Zalka, a medical technologist in the lab at St. Elizabeth Health Center, where Kelso and Colon were treated for their injuries, testified that Kelso’s blood alcohol level registered 0.139 in serum from a blood sample drawn from him an hour after the crash.
Garcar’s crash report pegged Kelso’s level at 0.115 in a sample taken at 4:05 a.m. The legal limit is 0.08.
Rebecca L. Doherty, an assistant county prosecutor, said in her opening statement that the car’s occupants drank in Girard and Youngstown bars before the crash.
But defense lawyer Ross T. Smith said Kelso drank beer before the crash and disputed Doherty’s assertion that Kelso drank several double bourbons before the crash.
The trial continues today.