By Paul Peirce
Tribune-Review (Greensburg, PA)
Copyright 2006 Tribune Review Publishing Company
All Rights Reserved
A Westmoreland County judge has ordered the county public safety department to preserve its recordings of radio dispatches over a two-hour period Oct. 30 when a Penn Township ambulance was involved in a crash in Hempfield Township that fatally injured a Murrysville man.
Judge Gary P. Caruso approved a motion to preserve the 911 dispatch recordings at the request of Pittsburgh attorney Suzanne B. Merrick, who is representing Penn Township Ambulance Association. The association is the owner of the Penn Township Rescue 6 ambulance that was involved in an accident at 5:49 a.m. Oct. 30 that mortally injured Frank J. Scalise Jr., 49, on Route 130 near the intersection with North Greengate Road.
Scalise, a county prison guard, reportedly was on his way to work, driving south at the intersection of Route 130 and North Greengate Road when his Ford Bronco was struck by an ambulance driven by Jason R. Fait, 30, of North Huntingdon Township. State police at Greensburg said Fait was driving west on Route 130 when he ran a red light at North Greengate and struck Scalise’s vehicle.
Scalise, who had worked 17 years at the prison, was airlifted from the scene to Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh. He died there four days later of blunt-force trauma to the head, according to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner’s Office.
No criminal charges have been filed, but state police are still investigating the accident, according to District Attorney John Peck. There is no record of a civil lawsuit being filed by Scalise’s estate.
But Merrick argued in court papers that the recordings of the radio transmissions involving the ambulance calls that morning should be preserved in the event of litigation.
“The Penn Township Ambulance Association believes that it is reasonably likely that litigation may ensue as a result of the accident of Oct. 30, 2006, and that information which may be relevant to its defenses therein are contained within tape recordings described above,” Merrick wrote.
Police said Fait was not injured in the accident. Police reported that the ambulance was returning to its station after transporting a patient to Excela Health Westmoreland Hospital, in Greensburg, and did not have its lights or siren activated.
Merrick noted that the county department of public safety routinely recycles its tape recordings every 45 days.
“As such, all the verbatim recordings of said radio transmissions will be irretrievably lost unless the department takes steps to preserve the same,” she said.
Caruso ordered that the county preserve a recording of all its radio transmissions involving the Penn Township Ambulance Association between 4:49 and 6:49 a.m. Oct. 30. He also ordered the agency to provide a copy to the association.