Pittsburgh police watchdog opens probe into woman's hit-and-run death

A watchdog agency has launched a probe into a woman’s middle-of-the-night encounter last month with Pittsburgh police minutes before she was killed by a hit-and-run driver on the West End Bridge.

Elizabeth Pittinger, executive director of Pittsburgh’s Citizen Police Review Board, told TribLive this week that she opened the inquiry into what led up to the Jan. 27 death of Faye McCoy, 44, of Homestead.

“We’re looking at it from a policy perspective, and what can we do to prevent this in the future?” Pittinger said.

Part of the inquiry’s focus will be on the city police’s crisis response team, a pilot program meant to respond to people having some sort of behavioral crisis stemming from factors such as mental illness or drug use.

Although police and EMTs were on scene with McCoy, who was suspected of being drunk, the crisis team was not dispatched.

“If we had a professional trained to answer that call, we could have stopped this from happening,” Pittinger said.

It was unclear if the crisis response team is meant to respond to incidents involving intoxicated people.

The team operates during daylight shifts only in Zone 1 on the North Side and Zone 2 in the Hill District, police said. The incident involving McCoy occurred in Zone 6, which covers the West End.

The police bureau declined Friday to provide details about the crisis response team’s operations.

Pittinger said that she’s not accusing police of any wrongdoing. The review board “wants any high-profile or questionable event evaluated,” she said.

As TribLive reported Thursday, McCoy was the passenger in a car whose driver was arrested for DUI after crashing into a median around 1:40 a.m. on Jan. 27. They arrested the driver and said that McCoy showed signs of being intoxicated.

Police said that McCoy rejected efforts to take her to a safe location. Officers left her on a West Carson Street sidewalk near the West End Circle.

Twelve minutes later, McCoy was walking on the nearby West End Bridge at 3 a.m. when she was fatally struck by a a dark-colored sedan that fled the scene.

Police continue to seek the car’s driver.

Pittsburgh police Chief Larry Scirotto declined to answer questions about the incident, saying that “the family has obtained legal representation.”

Cara Cruz, the bureau’s spokeswoman, also would not answer questions, citing “pending litigation.” She forwarded inquiries to Pittsburgh’s law department.

Maria Montano, a spokeswoman for Mayor Ed Gainey, also declined comment.

The Pittsburgh-based police reform group Alliance for Police Accountability is working with a lawyer to investigate the circumstances surrounding McCoy’s death, Executive Director Brandi Fisher said.

Fisher said she has been in touch with both McCoy’s family and the driver who was arrested, Nakila Crawford-Creighton, 43, of Homestead.

The attorney Fisher named could not be reached Friday for comment.

Neither McCoy’s family nor Crawford-Creighton returned multiple calls for comment.

Initially, Scirotto, too, had concerns about McCoy’s death — enough to prompt him to personally review footage from the body cameras of his officers who responded to the incident.

Scirotto said that he found no wrongdoing by his officers.

Both police and city officials have refused to release the officers’ body camera footage.

Montano declined to comment when asked for evidence to independently corroborate the Pittsburgh police account of their interaction with McCoy.

Police said in court paperwork that McCoy smelled of alcohol. But as the passenger, she wasn’t under arrest.

Officers spent “more than half an hour” trying to coax her to come with them to a safe location, according to police. But, they said, she repeatedly refused.

The Allegheny County Medical Examiner has not yet released the cause or manner of McCoy’s death.