Crash victim’s sister: ‘I’m at wit’s end’

She says she felt ‘intimidated’ by members of the Chester County DA’s Office after complaining about pace of fatal DUI case

WEST CHESTER >> The sister of a Chester County woman who was killed in a two-vehicle automobile crash last year by a driver who was allegedly under the influence of methamphetamines and fentanyl says she felt “intimidated” by members of the District Attorney Office in response to complaints about the slow pace of bringing the case to trial.

In a telephone interview Thursday, the woman told MediaNews Group she had been left feeling upset and frustrated by the way she was treated by both the prosecutor formerly assigned to the case and, later, by a member of the DA’s staff, who warned her against bringing her concerns to the attention of the media.

More than anything, however, she felt as if the case was being allowed to drag itself out, with the defendant no closer to a trial date than in the span since he slammed his pickup into her sister’s car.

“It’s been 14 months (since her sister’s death), and nobody is do

ing anything or being proactive,” said Linda Walls. “It’s been 14 months and the case is no farther along than Day One.”

The situation provided the first test of new District Attorney Deb Ryan’s promise to put the interest of crime victims and their families at the forefront of the office, less than a week into her tenure in office. Ryan said she reached out to Walls to apologize and vowed that her office would act differently in the future.

“It is our duty to ensure that all victims are notified about any hearing in connection with their criminal case and to treat everyone with respect,” Ryan said in an email. “Our office failed to do that in this case. I personally apologized to her and assured her that moving forward it would not happen again.

“As District Attorney, one of my top priorities will be to make sure victims and survivors are informed and always treated with respect,” she said. “I have addressed this with my office and will continue to reinforce the importance of how we engage with victims throughout my tenure.”

David Keech, 57, of East Fallowfield is charged with homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, aggravated assault while DUI, recklessly endangering another person, and related charges. He is alleged to have been high on illegal drugs when he collided head-on with a car driven by Walls sister, Katherine Lawrence of Sadsburyville.

Keech has been free on bail pending trial since March after being charged by Valley police the previous

month. He appeared in Common Pleas Court for a hearing on Tuesday before Judge Allison Bell Royer that Walls attended, at which the prosecutor in the case, Assistant District Attorney Christopher Miller, was seeking to have his bail increased to $1 million, while his attorneys were attempting to get Royer to order the DA’s Office to turn over relevant documents in the case to them.

Walls, a relative neophyte to the criminal justice system, said she was confused about why Keech would be allowed to remain free bail after having tested positive for fentanyl use, as the prosecution alleged, and upset to learn that his trial would be put off for at least another two months. When she approached Miller about her concerns, she said he seemed unsympathetic.

“He was very curt with me,” she said. “I didn’t understand why.” When she asked Miller what had been discussed at a sidebar conversation among him, Royer, and Keech’s attorneys, Peter Kratsa and Caroline Donato of the West Chester law firm of MacElree Harvey, “He wouldn’t tell me what was said up there.”

All he would say, she told MediaNews Group, was that Royer had agreed to place Keech on electronic home confinement, meaning that he would have to wear a GPS monitor and that his travel would be limited. He declined, however, to explain what “limited” meant, she said. Miller could not be reached for comment.

Walls noted that the first prosecutor assigned to the case, former Assistant District Attorney Tanner Jacobs, had left the office and that Miller had been on the case only shortly and seemed to be “in and out”

of the matter. She said she later tried to contact him at the DA’s Office but was unable to get through.

On Wednesday, however, she was contacted by a woman from the DA’s Office returning her calls, and who spoke to her for more than an hour.

She said that when she spoke to the woman, who gave only her first name, of her frustrations about the pace of the case and the preferential treatment she perceived Keech receiving. The woman told her that Miller was no longer with the DA’s Office, but did not specify whether he had resigned or been fired. During the conversation, she said she mentioned that she might take her concerns to the media.

“It was treated like I was threatening, but I didn’t know what else to so.” The suggestion, she said, upset the woman, whose tone of voice shifted from pleasant to stormy.

“‘You can mark it on your calendar, 18 months out before this will go to trial,’” Walls said the woman told her what would be the certain consequence of any media attention given the case. She also predicted that Keech’s attorneys would file a motion to have the trial moved and that it would go to a jurisdiction, “bordering Ohio.”

“I said, ‘Are you threatening me?’ She said, ‘No, I’m just telling you what the other side is going to do.’ But I took it as a threat. I am at wit’s end. I felt intimidated.”

Walls said she had a follow-up conversation with a supervisor in the office on Thursday, who was more sympathetic and “very kind.” But, she said, the woman did not offer an apology for the way she was treated the day before. “She

couldn’t tell me anything,” Walls said.

Then on Thursday, after questions were made to the DA’s Office about the matter, Walls said the staffer contacted her again. “The tone of her voice changed dramatically,” Walls said. The woman let her know which prosecutor had been assigned to the case in the wake of Miller’s departure — information she had previously said would not be available until later in the month.

But the woman denied having said anything about the trial being delayed, saying only that those comments must’ve come from “someone else in the office.”

According to police and court records, the delay in the case had been largely procedural.

The crash that claimed her sister’s life occurred around 10 a.m. on Friday, Nov. 9, 2018, when a Ford pickup truck operated by Keech, the property manager at the Airport Plaza Shopping Center, crossed from one lane into the other of West Lincoln Highway in Valley and collided with the Buick LeSabre that the victim, 56-year-old Katherine Lawrence of Sadsburyville, was driving, with one of her sons in the passenger seat.

A witness said that after seeing the truck cross into the oncoming lane, “everything in the flatbed of the truck ‘exploded,’’’ according to the criminal complaint filed by Officers Timothy Parker and Jeffrey Canale.

Lawrence was killed instantly in the crash, which shut down the highway for more than five hours.

According to the complaint, Keech told investigators that he might have fallen asleep at the wheel when he lost control of the Fire F-250 truck, and did not see the other car until

the last moment “and had no time to do anything.” He said that although he Wass prescribed for Percoset, his wife gives it to him as needed.

However, when police searched the truck as part of their investigation, they found several plastic straws that had been cut down inside in the truck’s cab. The straws had a white powdery sentence in them, consistent with being used to snort drugs.

An analysis of Keech’s blood that was drawn at Paoli Hospital on the day of the crash, where Keech had been taken to treat injuries he suffered, found the presence of methamphetamine, valium, and fentanyl. The results were not made available to police until Feb. 5, 2019, and Keech was arrested and charged Feb. 28 with homicide by vehicle while driving under the influence, aggravated assault by vehicle, use of a controlled substance, and recklessly endangering another person.

He was released on $50,000 bail in March, and had a preliminary hearing before Magisterial District Judge Grover Koon on the charges in May, after which he Wass held for trial in Common Pleas Court. Following his formal arraignment the following month, the case was continued four times as Keech’s attorneys

attempted to get reports of the crash investigation from the District Attorney’s Office.

The defense attorneys complained in a motion filed with Royer — a motion that was set to be heard on Tuesday — that the prosecutors had failed to give them the discovery. They showed Royer an email exchange between Donato and Miller in October, at which time Miller said the accident report would be “completed soon.” By December, it had not been turned over, according to their motion.

Krasta on Friday declined to comment on the case.

Meanwhile, Miller was complaining that Keech had violated terms of his bail after being tested positive for fentanyl and amphetamines on two occasions. He asked Royer to revoke his current bail and set it sat $1 million. She declined to do so on Tuesday but ordered him to undergo more frequent drug testing and wear an ankle bracelet.

Royer continued the case until her next criminal term in March, at which time she said she expects the accident reconstruction report to have been turned over to the defense.

To contact staff writer Michael P. Rellahan call 610-696-1544.