Burghill trucker pleads not guilty in pedestrian death

WARREN

Truck driver Charles W. Hillyer, 46, of state Route 7 in Burghill, has pleaded not guilty to failure to stop after an accident in the death of a pedestrian pushing a bicycle along Austintown-Warren Road late last fall.

Hillyer was indicted secretly by a Trumbull County grand jury last week in the death of Tony Wells, 25, of McDonald, who also had an address on Martin Street Southwest in Warren. If he’s convicted, Hillyer could get several years in prison.

Sgt. Ronald Schneider of the Ohio State Highway Patrol’s Criminal Investigative Bureau in Southington said Hillyer was driving a dump truck for Arrowhead Trucking of Cortland south on Austintown-Warren Road in Warren Township at 6:20 a.m. Dec. 4 with another truck from Arrowhead behind him when they passed Wells.

Hillyer said he never saw Wells but felt a “bump or bounce in his trailer.”

Hillyer didn’t immediately know he hit Wells, but the driver behind him made him aware of it later, Schneider said.

Wells was walking in the roadway on the truck driver’s side of the white road line, wearing dark clothing and was “not readily visible,” Schneider said.

Read more on the story in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.