Lisa Lataille gave a little smile Monday afternoon on the sidewalk in front of the Monongalia County Justice Center.
Minutes before in the glass-walled center, Magistrate Dimas Reyes accepted the guilty plea of Sukhjinder Singh – the longhaul trucker charged with vehicular homicide in a crash on Interstate 68 on Jan. 19 that sent the car of her husband Kevin careening off the Cheat Lake Bridge.
He will now serve a year in the North Central Regional Jail and be ordered to pay a $1,000 fine.
Lisa, meanwhile, smoothed her purple T-shirt with her husband’s photograph and the writing, “Justice for Kevin,” and remembered their days as husband and wife.
They were always laughing, doing things together, she said.
Yes, they got through fixup projects in their house (with nary an argument), and yes, they still carved out time for date nights – even after 10 years of marriage.
“Such a good heart,” she said. “He was everything.”
Singh, 37, who had been driving for a California-based trucking company, was charged with driving too fast for road conditions, in the middle of a wintry blast, on that Sunday evening in the middle of the Cheat Lake Bridge.
Eyewitnesses told sheriff’s deputies that Singh had already struck several vehicles before the fatal collision with Lataille, who had finished his shift at the Patteson Drive Eat n’ Park and was on his way home.
That’s normally a 30-minute drive, but not on this day – it was snowing heavily, visibility was down and so were temperatures.
He knew she’d be home, fretting about the weather, so he called from the parking lot.
“Hey, I’m leaving,” he said in a cellphone call to Lisa.
“Well, be careful,” came her reply. That was the last thing they ever said to one another.
A week later, Kevin Laitalle’s car was freed from the ice of Cheat Lake, which was still frozen over following the spate of Arctic-styled weather that had rolled in on the day of his death.
He was still in the driver’s seat, still wearing a seatbelt.
Given the way the law was written, Lisa Lataille said she felt justice was served – though she and family members would have liked a stronger penalty.
She and family members did prevail in a lawsuit which was leveled three months after his death. They didn’t discuss the settlement, preferring to keep it confidential.
Singh, who remained lodged in the jail in Doddridge County, wasn’t present for the hearing.
Dayton Meadows, his attorney, said the truck driver was cooperative through the aftermath of the crash and the investigation that followed.
Brandon Benchoff, the lawyer representing the county’s case, said Singh failed to tell authorities of the collision with Lataille’s vehicle – while initially fighting extradition from California, where he was eventually arrested.
In Reyes’ courtroom, Lisa Lataille leaned on her cane (she has mobility issues) and spoke in a clear voice: “My world was shattered in an instant,” she said.
Outside, on that sidewalk, she talked about the way people were drawn to her husband, a 59-year-old Rhode Island native who relocated to Pennsylvania after a tour in the U.S. Navy.
His friends even searched on foot in extreme weather in the hours and days after his family declared him missing.
“If Kevin could help you, he would,” she said. “It’s like he’d do anything for anybody. He was just a good guy, taken too soon.”
