Dec 14, 2018 4 min read

Sherry Campbell recalled she was talking to Kimberly Dollard when a Jeep rammed through the wall of their office.

“It took her right out of her chair, and she disappeared into the rubble,” Campbell said during a preliminary hearing at Washington County Courthouse Friday morning.

District Judge Robert Redlinger ordered Chad Spence, 44, of Weirton, W.Va., to face trial on charges including criminal homicide, attempted homicide, vehicular homicide, reckless endangerment and aggravated assault by vehicle following the hearing.

Spence didn’t testify. The city police detective who filed charges said Spence couldn’t explain what happened.

The case stems from events on June 6, when investigators said Spence drove his Jeep Liberty down Sharp Avenue in Washington fast enough to get it airborne before it sailed through a wall of Washington Health System Neighbor Health Center about 12:30 p.m.

Campbell was uninjured. She said she crawled through the hole the Jeep had punched in the wall to call 911.

Dollard, 57, a receptionist at the health center from Amwell Township, was pronounced dead at the scene.

A patient who was there that day, 87-year-old David Adams, was hurt seriously enough that he was flown to UPMC-Presbyterian hospital in Pittsburgh.

Testimony showed Spence didn’t know any of the people near where he crashed into the building.

Lt. Daniel Stanek, who filed the charges, said on the stand that Adams is still in a care home.

While Stanek was on the stand, prosecutors played surveillance footage from a camera near the intersection of Sharp and Leonard avenues.

Stanek said the footage shows Spence’s vehicle pause in the middle of the street for two minutes and 45 seconds before accelerating down the hill.

He said the Jeep was moving at least 40 mph and traveled at least 40 feet through the air, clearing some shrubs outside the building, and traveled more than 30 feet inside. Spence’s Jeep narrowly missed a parked vehicle in which two people were sitting.

Stanek spoke briefly to Spence that day before he was taken to Washington Hospital, where he was released after a few hours, and on other occasions later.

Spence allegedly told the detective he’d been in town for an appointment at a Suboxone clinic on Locust Street a block away. Toxicology results showed drugs or alcohol weren’t a cause of the crash, Stanek said.

Court papers say Spence told Stanek he recalled stopping on Sharp to allow his GPS to recalibrate. The next thing he remembers was being inside the building.

Chief Public Defender Glenn Alterio asked Redlinger to dismiss the homicide charge, saying the prosecution hadn’t made a sufficient case to proceed on that count.

“There’s really no testimony that there was any intent to kill,” Alterio said.

Deputy District Attorney Jason Walsh countered by pointing out the amount of time Spence had spent on the top of the hill and to the other events shown in the video.

Redlinger held the homicide charge along with the others. Spence remains in Washington County jail without bond.

Following the hearing, Stanek accounted for the length of time it took to file charges by saying police were being thorough.

He said he was waiting to see if there a medical explanation for what happened. Spence didn’t provide one, the detective said.

Police also ruled out a defect in the Jeep as a cause of the accident.

The Jeep had passed a West Virginia inspection a few weeks earlier. Terry Moore, a certified state inspector who checked the vehicle for city police, said he found no mechanical problems.

“The last, biggest thing was to rule out medical,” Stanek said.

Among Dollard’s relatives who attended the hearing was her half brother, Terry Jurkovsky.

“Anybody that came in contact with Kim where she worked realized what kind of person she was and how many people she actually came in contact with,” said Jurkovsky, 60, of South Franklin Township. “She showed much love and much appreciation to everybody that she came in contact with.”