Trial begins for 2nd drag-racing driver in crash that killed Serra Catholic student

One witness testified the SUV passing him on the ramp to the Mansfield Bridge was moving so fast, it fishtailed and almost struck him.

Another told the judge it looked like the driver of the Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk was in a road rage incident and chasing a white Volkswagen Jetta.

A third witness said it appeared that the Jeep and Volkswagen were racing.

“I never seen two vehicles travel that fast in and out of traffic trying to keep up with each other if it wasn’t a race,” Michael Sisko, who was on his way to work that morning, Sept. 20, 2023, testified Wednesday.

Prosecutors allege that’s exactly what it was: a race, one that would turn fatal as the drivers headed to their jobs at Bettis Atomic Power Laboratory in West Mifflin.

The Jetta, hitting speeds of 107 mph, struck a school van carrying Serra Catholic students and killed Samantha Kalkbrenner, 15, of Dravosburg.

The driver of the Volkswagen, William Soliday, pleaded guilty last month to third-degree murder and was ordered to serve 5½-12 years in state prison.

But the driver of the Jeep, Andrew Voigt, has chosen to have a nonjury trial.

It began Wednesday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Bruce Beemer and will continue Thursday.

Voigt, 38, of Penn Hills is charged with five misdemeanor counts of recklessly endangering another person, as well as summary traffic counts of reckless driving, careless driving, speeding and illegal racing.

A charge of accidents involving death was previously dismissed.

According to investigators, Voigt, whose vehicle was immediately behind Soliday’s at the time of impact, did not stop at the scene.

He told officers that after the crash, he pulled over on the side of the road, “lost control of his bowels,” and vomited on himself.

He then drove home, where he remained for about 17 minutes.

During that time, investigators said, he changed clothes and removed a distinctive, white sticker from the rear window of his Jeep — it had a picture of a tank running over stick-figures and read “Nobody cares about your stick figure family.”

Voigt then took a different car — an Audi A8 — to work.

He was tracked through the use of dashcam video from other drivers that day, as well as cameras that read license plates.

On Wednesday, prosecutors called four witnesses from the road that morning. They described the Jetta and Jeep as driving extremely fast and weaving in and out of traffic.

None of them, however, testified to seeing the two drivers signal to each other in any way to race.

Gregory McCauley said he was with his wife and son that morning when he saw the Jetta behind him weaving.

As he took the turn to get onto the Mansfield Bridge that links McKeesport and Dravosburg, he spotted the Jeep.

“It almost hit me. Right in the curve, it slid almost right into me,” he said.

Then, McCauley continued, the Jeep took off.

“You could tell he got on it, because the whole back end fishtailed,” he said. “I heard the engine explode into power.”

McCauley testified that he was driving across the bridge at 65 mph and had no chance of keeping up.

The Jeep, he said, “just kind of disappeared.”

Then, seconds later, he came upon the crash scene.

The Jetta was on fire, McCauley said, and the Jeep was gone.

Jessica McCauley said she was the first to notice the cars on the bridge.

“They drove erratically around the corner almost into my family,” she testified. “He was driving crazy. The Jeep was way too fast. We thought he was chasing somebody. It looked like a road rage incident the way he was driving.”

When they got to the crash scene, Jessica McCauley said she approached one of the students, who was injured, and tried to use her sweatshirt to stop his bleeding.

Sisko testified he was driving a Ford F-350 work truck and towing a trailer when the Jetta and Jeep swerved around him on the bridge.

He said he thought the Jeep was going to flip over, it was going so fast on the curve.

“I don’t know how he was able to keep the back tires down,” Sisko said.

The final witness of the day, Allegheny County Police Detective Alexander Durrani, testified the Jeep and Jetta were traveling together for about two miles.

As part of their investigation, detectives recovered the Jetta’s event data recorder which showed the car moving at 107 mph five seconds before the crash. At impact, it was traveling 90 mph.

The speed limit on the bridge, he said, is 25 mph.

When Durrani went to Voigt’s house that day, he said they recovered a 2020 Jeep Grand Cherokee Trackhawk. The SUV, Durrani said, had a Hellcat engine capable of 707 horsepower — going from 0 to 60 mph in 3½ seconds.

“It’s an extremely fast car.”

Although investigators attempted to recover information from the Jeep’s event data recorder, Durrani said, there was nothing to get.

That’s because, Durrani explained, the Jeep did not have a triggering event to start recording such as a collision or sudden deceleration.

However, Durrani said according to the video they recovered from other drivers, the Jeep entered the bridge two seconds after the Jetta and exited the bridge two seconds after the Jetta, which means they were traveling approximately the same speed across the span.