Driver to face trial for manslaughter

By David Hurst, dhurst@altoonamirror.com
CLEARFIELD — The Patton woman blamed for running down a Mahaffey woman and her granddaughter in a grisly Route 36 accident appeared to be high and told responders at the scene she was on her way home from a methadone clinic, a state trooper testified Wednesday.

Despite claims from her defense attorney at a preliminary hearing that prosecutors showed no proof that Bobbi Joe Morgan struck the Mahaffey pair, District Judge James Hawkins bound her charges to court, meaning she will face trial on vehicular manslaughter and a long list of other counts.

The decision came after prosecutors introduced a handful of witnesses at the scene, many of them responders, who tried to save Bertha Kitchen, 63, and her 3-year-old granddaughter, Samantha.

“All I could see was blood,” said Vicki Hullihen of Mahaffey, after testifying she went to help and saw the girl’s body 25 to 30 feet from the roadway.

Coroners from Jefferson and Clearfield counties pronounced the pair dead from blunt force trauma due to a motor vehicle accident.

Police say Morgan, 22, of Patton was heading south on the highway but veered off, hitting the pair and then traveling through yards and into a wooden fence.

An accident scene investigator said Morgan’s vehicle hit Kitchen and her granddaughter on the southbound berm of the road, sending them west into a yard, and that the car went airborne before hitting two fences.

Witnesses testified hearing a “thump” and then a cloud of dust before seeing the vehicle slam into nearby fences on Route 36.

No one said they witnessed the vehicle hitting the Kitchens, but several, including Doug Turner, a Mahaffey church pastor, said he saw the pair heading back from the post office moments earlier.

Defense Attorney Brian Manchester asked witnesses about a tractor-trailer heading in the opposite direction moments earlier, pointing to testimony from Cpl. Douglas Meko, a state trooper assigned to the Punxsutawney barracks, indicating that Morgan swerved to miss a truck and lost control of her vehicle.

Meko also said Morgan’s eyes were bloodshot, pupils constricted and that she seemed “tired and droopy.”

She lost control, closed her eyes and believed she had hit people, Meko said, referring to a statement she gave him.

Drug tests showed Morgan tested positive for methadone and sedatives, prosecutors noted, and Meko said she failed a field sobriety test at the Punxsutawney barracks after being checked for injuries at a hospital.

Morgan faces involuntary manslaughter, vehicular homicide while under the influence of drugs or alcohol and aggravated assault by vehicle, among other charges.

Manchester believes many of her charges should be dismissed, saying just because prescribed drugs may have been in her system, it isn’t proof she was too intoxicated to drive. There were no signs she was speeding, he said, or that she was negligent or reckless, requirements for involuntary manslaughter.

Clearfield District Attorney William Shaw Jr. said testimony given at the hearing backs their charges. The tragedy was a reminder that there can be “profound consequences” in a driving under the influence accident, he said.

Morgan remained in jail Wednesday in lieu of $100,000 bond.

Mirror Staff Writer David Hurst is at 946-7457.