JBissett@DominionPost.com
Legal ramifications continue for Sukhjinder Singh, the longhaul trucker who pleaded guilty in a fatal crash in January that sent a car plummeting off the Cheat Lake Bridge.
Singh earlier this week was taken into custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is now lodged in the North Central Regional Jail in Doddridge County, court documents show.
No other information was available.
The 37-year-old, who lists New York as his state of residence, had been employed by a transport company in California.
Eyewitnesses said he had been driving too fast for road conditions at the height of a snowstorm Jan. 19 while crossing the bridge on Interstate 68.
The fatal collision with Kevin Lataille’s car came after eyewitnesses reported Singh striking several other vehicles.
Ringcam video from a house in view of the roadway, also showed a large truck skidding and kicking up snow, and another car going off the Cheat Lake Bridge and into the water 80 feet below.
A week later, responders drilled through the ice of the frozen-over lake to recover the car of Lataille, a 59-year-old Smithfield, Pa., man who was on his way home after working his shift at the Patteson Drive Eat ‘n Park.
Lataille was still in the driver’s seat, still wearing his seatbelt.
The truck driver was arrested in California two months later and extradited back to West Virginia.
Speaking through an interpreter, Singh told authorities that while he was behind the wheel that day, he denied causing the wreck that killed Lataille.
Last month, he entered a guilty plea in Monongalia County Magistrate to a charge of vehicular homicide, which carries a $1,000 fine and a year behind bars – the North Central Regional Jail, in this case, where he was taken after the ICE detainment.
After the plea and sentencing, Lataille’s family members said they were heartened by the outpouring for the Rhode Island native who relocated to southwestern Pennsylvania after a hitch in the U.S. Navy.
Many of his friends searched for him on foot in extreme weather after his family declared him missing.
Her husband would have done the same, Lisa Lataille said.
“If Kevin could help you, he would,” she said. “He’d do anything for anybody. He was just a good guy, taken too soon.”
