A prosecutor Tuesday showed jurors the gray camouflage jacket Christi Spicuzza was wearing when she was fatally shot on Feb. 10, 2022.
The bullet had whizzed through the jacket’s hood that night, breaking a zipper before striking Spicuzza in the back of the head, forensic pathologist Todd Luckasevic testified. It severed part of her spinal cord before exiting her right cheek.
Spicuzza, 38, of Turtle Creek, a mother of four and an Uber driver, was killed around 10:20 p.m.
Luckasevic’s testimony came during the second day of the homicide trial for her accused killer, Calvin Crew. Investigators said Spicuzza had picked him up as a fare.
The distance between Spicuzza’s head and the gun’s muzzle remains “undetermined,” said Luckasevic, who used to work at the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office. The lack of gunpowder burns on her skin offered no clues about how far away her killer was when she was shot.
But the bullet’s trajectory was obvious, he said.
“Back to front, left to right and slightly downward,” Luckasevic said. “This is immediately incapacitating.”
Spicuzza fell unconscious as soon as the bullet hit her spine, he testified. She died face down. Blood, which is caustic, pooled near the side of her head for so long that it ate away a patch of her skin. Luckasevic said the damage would be consistent with her lying there for a day and a half.
Minute details
Some of Spicuzza’s last moments were captured on a dashcam inside her car. The footage, expected to be played for the jury later in the trial, shows Spicuzza pleading with her masked attacker, telling him she has a family and asking, “Why are you doing this?”
Police said Crew, 24, of Pitcairn robbed and fatally shot Spicuzza, leaving her body in a wooded area in Monroeville after taking a ride in the rented gray Nissan sedan she was driving.
Crew is charged with criminal homicide, robbery, kidnapping, tampering with evidence and carrying a firearm without a license.
Prosecutors initially sought the death penalty in the case but withdrew notice to do so just days before jury selection started last month.
Crew’s girlfriend is expected to testify Tuesday afternoon.
The trial began Monday in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court before Judge Edward J. Borkowski. It is expected to continue through the week.
Tuesday morning’s testimony was driven by minute details:
The position of two Uber stickers on the front and rear windshields of Spicuzza’s car.
The measurement — about ¾ of an inch — from the top of Spicuzza’s head to the entry and exit wounds, illustrating the path of the fatal shot.
The location of a dozen license-plate readers and hundreds of cell-phone GPS signals that tracked Spicuzza’s last, fatal ride.
Spicuzza’s romantic partner, Brandon Marto, called 911 when she didn’t come home from her Uber shift. He checked local hospitals, the jail and the morgue before posting on social media that she was missing.
Two days later, an Amazon delivery driver spotted Spicuzza’s body in the woods — about 60 feet off of Rosecrest Drive in Monroeville.
A phone is found
When police arrived, Spicuzza’s cellphone, car and car keys were missing. Her car was later found in Pitcairn with her purse still on the front seat, prosecutors said.
A worker at U.S. Steel’s Edgar Thomson mill testified Tuesday that he found Spicuzza’s phone — a white iPhone, still in its clear-and-pink case — on railroad tracks about 240 feet below the Westinghouse Bridge.
He turned it over to police, whose forensic teams extracted its data.
The dashboard camera later was found in Penn Hills.
The first half of Tuesday’s testimony ended with jurors watching a lengthy video clip that mapped the path of Spicuzza’s cellphone, by way of GPS coordinates.
At some points on the map, Spicuzza’s cell service became spotty and the GPS coordinates’ path appeared “sporadic,” said Matt Rosenberg, a forensic examiner for the Allegheny County Police.
For about four minutes starting around 10:20 p.m., Spicuzza’s cellphone remained on Monroeville’s Rosecrest Drive, where her body later was found.
The phone then traveled along Route 30, toward East Pittsburgh, Rosenberg said.
It stopped, at 10:39 p.m. at the Westinghouse Bridge.