Police cast doubt on accused killer’s alibi in Uber driver slaying trial
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Allegheny County and Port Authority police detectives scrutinized bus surveillance videos, municipal cameras and businesses as they checked out Calvin Crew’s alibi for the night Christina Spicuzza was killed while driving for Uber.
Crew told investigators during an initial interview that he’d gotten an Uber from his home in Pitcairn to Penn Hills the evening of Feb. 10, 2022, walked to Wilkinsburg and then took a bus back home late that night.
But county Det. Steve Hitchings told a jury on Wednesday that he found no evidence on those surveillance videos to support Crew’s statement.
Crew is accused of killing Spicuzza, 38, of Turtle Creek that night after she picked him up as a fare around 9 p.m. in a dark gray Nissan Sentra. His trial began Monday before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski.
Police said that Crew, 24, marched Spicuzza into the woods off Rosecrest Drive in Monroeville around 10:20 p.m. and shot her in the back of the head.
He then took her vehicle and cellphone, they said. Spicuzza’s body was found by an Amazon delivery driver on Feb. 12, 2022, in those woods. Her car was found on Fourth Street in Pitcairn.
The prosecution’s case is expected to continue Thursday with the presentation of dashboard camera footage taken from inside Spicuzza’s car that night that shows her pleading for her life.
Wednesday’s testimony was marked by several Allegheny County homicide detectives recounting their efforts to gather video evidence showing the path Spicuzza’s car traveled that night — both in the hours leading up to her death and afterward.
Det. William Hermann said that Spicuzza’s vehicle passed the Sharwood Lounge in Pitcairn at 10:27 p.m. and was parked on Fourth Street at 12:17 a.m.
License-plate reading cameras showed the vehicle on Route 30 and Clyde Avenue in North Versailles at 10:39 p.m.
Spicuzza’s phone was ultimately found in a valley below the Westinghouse Bridge near that location.
The final witness on Wednesday was Jason Clark, a latent print examiner with the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.
He testified that he examined 12 different prints lifted from Spicuzza’s vehicle and cellphone as part of the investigation.
Among the items Clark said he reviewed was a print from the outside of the car’s rear, passenger window.
That print, he said, matched Crew’s right ring finger.