UNIONTOWN (AP) - A former state trooper who claims he was forced into retirement after challenging the official version of the fatal police shooting of an unarmed 12-year-old boy that resulted in a landmark $12.5 million settlement by the Pennsylvania State Police is again questioning the conclusion troopers from the same barracks where he used to work - this time in a crash that killed a pastor's son.
Investigators from the barracks near Uniontown, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh, contend 18-year-old Ewing Marcus Marietta II fell asleep or otherwise lost control of his 2001 Ford Mustang about 2:45 a.m. while driving down a steep stretch of U.S. Route 40 coming home from a football camp in North Carolina in July 2009. Troopers concluded Marietta was ejected from his rolling car, and died from resulting head injuries three days later.
But 49-year-old James Baranowski, who worked 17 years as a state trooper and 11 of those years as an accident reconstructionist before moving into the private sector and doing the same work for insurance companies and attorneys, believes the young man wasn't thrown from the car, let alone fatally injured in the crash.
Instead, Baranowski said Marietta was mostly likely struck by a passing motorist, probably as he stood in the highway trying to flag down help after the initial crash. Baranowski contends unidentified people in the car he believes hit Marietta are likely the same two individuals he believes stopped and called 911 before being allowed to leave by a trooper at the scene.
"They never got their names or phone numbers or their contact information," Baranowski told The Associated Press. "And that's contrary to (police) academy training."
Sgt. Joseph D'Andrea, the patrol supervisor at the barracks in question, said he was advised by superiors not to comment for this story because the Rev. Ewing Marietta, the victim's father, has a lawsuit pending against the as-yet unidentified driver of the other car, which could result in some troopers being called as witnesses.
Still, D'Andrea feels so strongly that he defended the official investigation, even though he declined to comment publicly on Baranowski's specific claims.
"I haven't seen anything that would support what's being said" by Baranowski, D'Andrea told the AP. "Any questions they have asked me, I have answered."
"And we stand by our crash report," D'Andrea said.
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