Girlfriend of man on trial in Uber driver's slaying testifies

The woman whose request for an Uber preceded the events that left a rideshare driver dead testified Tuesday she had no reason to think anything was amiss when her boyfriend asked her to get him a lift.

Tanaya Mullen, 25, told jurors that she and Calvin Crew, 24, of Pitcairn, didn’t own a vehicle. It wasn’t uncommon for him to ask her to get him an Uber.

Prosecutors say Crew killed the Uber driver, 38-year-old Christi Spicuzza of Turtle Creek, shooting her in the back of the head on Feb. 10, 2022, after she gave him a ride. Her body was found in Monroeville.

Mullen, who took the stand on the second day of Crew’s homicide trial, said she was at her father’s house doing laundry on the evening of Feb. 10.

During a FaceTime call that lasted less than 90 seconds at 7:50 p.m., Crew asked her to call him an Uber. Mullen said she did.

She testified that she texted and FaceTimed Crew several times throughout the evening. During one FaceTime call at 10:33 p.m., she said, it was “pitch black” and she couldn’t see where Crew was calling from. But she suspected he was in a car because of road noise in the background.

Spicuzza, a mother of four, last spoke with her romantic partner just before 9 p.m. when she told him she was going to pick up a fare in Pitcairn.

Police believe she was dead by 10:30 p.m.

Mullen testified that she and Crew never talked about where he went that night or what he did.

They didn’t discuss it even after she noticed the next day that the gun she bought in July 2021 and kept on her nightstand was missing, she testified.

Mullen said she initially told detectives that she had lost the gun at a party. She later changed her story and said it disappeared from her nightstand.

Crew told her to report it missing, she said.

Mullen’s testimony came after her attorney raised concerns to Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski that she could incriminate herself if forced to take the stand. The judge said he would sustain objections related to those concerns, but allowed her to testify.

Her testimony is expected to continue Wednesday morning.

Shot from behind

Jurors also heard a more than hourlong recording of the first interview county detectives conducted with Crew at the Penn Hills police station. In it, Crew said little to the detectives, who repeatedly suggested he may have been trying to rob Spicuzza.

Earlier in the day, a prosecutor showed jurors the gray camouflage jacket Spicuzza was wearing when she was fatally shot.

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.

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 left Spicuzza’s body in a wooded area in Monroeville.

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.

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.