TodayLash found guilty of homicide by vehicle in Lower Allen crash
Defendant says he thought everything was in order when he inspected his truck before the collision
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Article RatingA Cumberland County jury found truck driver Michael Dean Lash, 42, of Harrisburg, guilty of homicide by vehicle this morning.
An additional count of involuntary manslaughter was dropped by prosecutors before the case went to the jury.
Lash was charged in connection with a July 2006 crash in Lower Allen Township. The accident killed 58-year-old Steelton resident Samuel Maravich when the tractor-trailer Lash was driving pushed Maravich’s car off the Route 581 bridge over Hummel Avenue.
The two-day trial centered on the condition of brakes on the tractor-trailer Lash was driving.
“The crash occurred because the brakes were in such a condition that he could not stop,’ said Cpl. Andrew Thierwechter of the Pennsylvania State Police, who does accident reconstructions.
Lash applied the brakes 464 feet from the place the rig stopped and 235 feet from the point at which he hit Maravich’s car, Thierwechter said during testimony Wednesday.
If all 10 brakes had been working to their full capacity, he said, Lash should have been able to stop in 196 feet, completely avoiding the crash. If the brakes had been working only to the minimum capacity required by law, the corporal said, Lash should have been able to stop in 242 feet, which, given reports that Maravich’s car was still moving when he was hit, could also have averted the tragedy.
Video presentation
Trooper Larry Byrd Sr. used an actual air brake and showed jurors a brief video taken while he was inspecting the rig after the crash to show how the absence of pins in the last two brakes on the trailer meant that the push rod wasn’t touching anything.
“The wheels can just keep turning,” Byrd said. The right brakes on the truck’s second and third axles also didn’t contribute anything to the stopping effort, he said, because the brake shoe wasn’t making contact with the brake drum, as evidenced by a heavy coating of rust.
Additionally, they said, the left brake at the third axle was out of adjustment and not functioning at full capacity.
The two testified that none of those problems could have been caused by the crash and that all of them appeared to have existed for some time. However, Thierwechter did say that the pin problem was something that could have happened during driving.
Thierwechter also addressed the issue of speed, saying that information retrieved from the rig after the crash indicated that Lash, who had just merged onto Route 581, had, in the minute and 45 seconds before the engine shut off, gone from 22 mph to about 66 mph and was at about 56.3 mph when he started braking.
Both state and federal regulations require pre- and post-trip inspections, Byrd and Thierwechter said, and the problems they saw should have been apparent to someone performing those duties.
Lash then took the stand, testifying that he had been driving tractor-trailers off and on for about 20 years. He had, as his logs indicated, been performing the inspections, he said, which usually took him 20 to 30 minutes. His logs recorded them at 15 minutes because that was how he had been taught to record them, he said, and although he saw surface rust on the second and third right brakes, he interpreted that to mean only that they were not properly adjusted.
He did not observe the push rod problems with the last two brakes during his inspection that day, Lash said, and therefore his log sheet indicated that he found no problems.
“You’re not required to indicate surface rust on your log sheet, are you?” his attorney, Shane Kope, asked.
“No,” Lash said.
“How do you know when your brakes aren’t working?” Cumberland County Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Sibert asked Lash.
“When you do your tests,” Lash said, explaining that he usually would do a road test on the trailer brakes.
“A lot of times what I’ll do is I’ll leave the trailer brakes pulled and try to pull out,” he explained.
“Everything seemed like it was in order?” Kope asked.
“To me it did, yes,” Lash replied.
Log on to www.cumberlink.com for updates on the case.
