Driver to stand trial in fatal 'drag-racing' crash that killed Serra Catholic student

It took just two minutes and 18 seconds.

A crowded Pittsburgh courtroom fell silent Friday as dash cam footage — time-stamped two seconds after 7:22 a.m. Sept. 20 — showed school van driver Richard Alan Maleski waiting at a stop sign and preparing to enter the intersection at Third Street and Richland Avenue in Dravos­burg.

He looked left. Then right. And he started turning onto the road.

Then, without warning, William Soliday’s white Volks­wagen Jetta — clocked speeding up to 107 mph — slammed into the Ford van, flipping the vehicle and ejecting three students, one of them landing on the hood of Soliday’s car.

Passenger Samantha Kalkbrenner, a 15-year-old Serra Catholic High School student, died at the scene.

A violent, metallic crunch punched the air as the van flipped Maleski and his four passengers on their side inside the van, jostling them like clothes in a laundromat washing machine.

Some in court gasped — or jumped in their seats a bit — at the moment of collision. Others wept.

At 38 seconds after 7:24 a.m., the dash cam footage ended.

District Judge Kate Lovelace sided with prosecutors at Soliday’s preliminary hearing Friday, denying a defense attorney’s plea to drop homicide and homicide by vehicle charges against Soliday, 43, of North Huntingdon, who entered the court in a red Allegheny County Jail jumpsuit. He has been held without bail since Dec. 20 at the Downtown jail.

Lovelace held all 15 counts against Soliday for court, from homicide and recklessly endangering another person to illegal racing and reckless driving. He heads to Common Pleas Court on Feb. 26.

Lovelace also held for court 11 charges against the man who prosecutors said was racing Soliday: Andrew Voigt, 37, of Penn Hills. Among them are five misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person. Lovelace dismissed the only felony charge Voigt faced. He’ll be arraigned the same day as Soliday.

Prosecutors said Voigt was driving in his Jeep Grand Cherokee as the two men raced on their way to work at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin.

Defense attorneys stressed there was no evidence suggesting the men had planned to race each other that morning.

Casey White, Soliday’s attorney, argued that homicide charges against his client should be dropped because Soliday showed no intent or malice to injure or kill anyone with his car.

He applied the brake about a half-second before the collision, White noted.

“He tried to stop this accident from happening,” White said. “But this was an accident — with no maliciousness or ill will.”

Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Brian Catanzarite argued Soliday didn’t need to have intent. Instead, Catanzarite read language from a U.S. Supreme Court case, saying Soliday exhibited malice because he was reckless and “consciously disregarded” the “high risk of death or serious injury” others faced due to his speed.

“You don’t drive at those speeds and not think there’s not a risk for other people,” Catanzarite said.

The arguments capped three-and-a-half hours of detail-driven testimony in a Downtown courtroom that, at times, only had room to stand. The prosecution called as witnesses three motorists who said they saw the men speeding, as well as three Allegheny County Police detectives, two of them from the force’s homicide unit.

Three videos — including one captured by a Tesla’s dashboard camera, which showed the crash — were played publicly for the first time.

Serra Catholic High School Principal Robert Childs sat unannounced in the courtroom’s back row, occasionally casting a gaze toward the floor and rubbing his eyes. A teenage boy roughly Kalkbrenner’s age cried repeatedly during testimony about the crash.

Kalkbrenner’s parents also attended, at times crying or clutching each other’s hands. The couple declined to talk with reporters as they left the courtroom.

Voigt’s Jeep didn’t hit any vehicle in the crash, which meant he shouldn’t be charged with leaving the scene of an accident, one of his attorneys, Kevin Alan Chernosky, told the district judge.

Allegheny County Police Detective Blake Maloney, however, offered testimony that suggested Voigt knew he was involved in the crash, Catanzarite said. Maloney interviewed Voigt at a pizzeria outside Bettis Laboratory on the day of the accident.

After driving away from the crash, Voigt pulled to the side of the road, “lost control of his bowels” and vomited on himself, Maloney said Voigt told him in the interview. He drove home, changed clothes and took a different car to work.

Police found no signs of bodily waste in Voigt’s car, Maloney said.

But Voigt, who stood in a white dress shirt, largely stoic, for more than three hours Friday, also removed a decal from the back window of his Jeep after coming home from the crash, Maloney said. The decal — which police used to track his Jeep — read, “No one cares about your stick-figure family.”

“He said it was a bad look,” Maloney testified. Voigt also “said he was too ashamed” to tell anyone at work about the crash.

Allegheny County Police Detective Alexander Durrani said he reviewed extensive evidence before helping to draft the affidavit of probable cause against Soliday and Voigt.

He viewed the three videos shown Friday and tracked the two men’s routes through parts of the Mon Valley with automated license plate readers, which captured photos of them driving on Sept. 20.

Durrani also testified at great length about the Event Data Recorder — an automotive form of driving data recorder similar to an airplane’s “black boxes” — from Soliday’s Volkswagen.

That recorder showed Soliday hit a top speed of 107 mph moments before the crash, Durrani testified. He hit 106 mph 1.5 seconds before impact, then dropped to 104 mph at 1 second before impact.

Soliday didn’t apply his brakes until a half-second before the collision, when the data recorder clocked him going 103 mph, Durrani said. He hit the school van at an estimated 90 mph.

Victims from the crash kept mostly quiet Friday. Maleski, wearing a shoulder sling, was the only person from the school van to testify.

Serra Catholic High School students Alonna Mortin, who suffered a spinal fracture and concussion, and Cullen Boring , who had cuts to his face, didn’t testify. Neither did Andrew Clauto, who required stitches near his eye.

Kalkbrenner suffered blunt force trauma to the head, neck and abdomen, as well as traumatic asphyxiation, prosecutors said. After she was ejected from the vehicle, the van toppled onto her.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office deemed Samantha’s death an accident.

Stacy Alderman was sitting at a red light as she drove from her White Oak home to her job in West Mifflin about 7:20 a.m. Sept. 20. She remembered hearing a “loud, angry, impatient horn blare” before Soliday’s white Volkswagen sped up and passed her in the left lane.

Alderman said Soliday was driving “obviously ridiculously fast.”

White objected.

“He was speeding,” she quipped.

When Alderman drove near the crash, she stopped her car to assist with treating the victims.

“It was just automatic,” Alderman told the judge. “I didn’t even think about it.”

Greg McCauley, who was driving his stepson to school at 7:20 a.m., also saw Soliday and Voigt driving fast as they neared the Mansfield Bridge that morning. McCauley estimated he was driving about 65 mph over the bridge, a frequent speeding zone despite its posted 40 mph limit.

“They were going twice as fast as I was,” McCauley said.

After the crash, McCauley also stopped to help. He ran to Soliday’s Volkswagen, which had caught fire, and knocked out a window to get to him. He tried to make out the outlines of Soliday’s body behind deployed airbags.

“I saw his hand,” he said. “He was covered in blood.”

Michael Sisko, whom Soliday and Voigt also passed as they sped toward the Mansfield Bridge, appeared to grow agitated with questions about the details of the two men’s speed. White also challenged Sisko, whose truck was hauling a trailer that day, to define the difference between “racing” and “chasing.”

“They were racing,” Sisko testified. White objected.

“They were in a hurry to get somewhere,” he responded.

Sisko said that, as they neared the bridge, Soliday and Voigt were “within a half-a-car-length” of each other.

“100% honesty, it was like a drag race,” he said.

White pressed Sisko with questions.

“I was there. If you would’ve seen what I’ve seen — it was a race,” replied Sisko, who appeared frustrated in front of the judge.

“Listen, I’m not gonna go back and forth with you. It was a race.”