'I have a family': Prosecutors show dash cam footage leading up to Uber driver, Turtle Creek mother's homicide

For nearly 20 minutes, Christi Spicuzza’s last Uber fare seemed relatively normal.

She picked up the man about 9:15 p.m. on Feb. 10, and he slid into the backseat of her Nissan Sentra through the rear passenger-side door.

He spoke only a few words, but traffic seemed relatively light as Spicuzza — shown by the dashboard camera her fiancé bought for her, navigated from Brinton Road in Pitcairn toward Dersam Street in Penn Hills.

As she drives on Pershing Street toward the intersection, she can be heard asking the man in the backseat which side of the street his destination was on. It’s unclear if he answered, but the footage shows him sliding toward the middle of the backseat and putting a black handgun to Spicuzza’s head.

The video shows she reached up and felt the metal, then said, “You’ve got to be joking.”

By roughly 10:30 p.m., police allege, Spicuzza, of Turtle Creek, was shot to death in a wooded area off of Rosecrest Drive in Monroeville.

Detectives said the man in the backseat was 22-year-old Calvin Crew, and a judge on Wednesday agreed that there was enough evidence to send Crew to trial on charges of homicide, kidnapping and robbery.

Crew, dressed in a black-and-white striped Allegheny County Jail jumpsuit, pleaded not guilty to the charges.

The preliminary hearing, delayed nearly two hours because of a lengthy proceeding in the courtroom beforehand, lasted a little more than an hour.

A bulk of the hearing was simply Allegheny County Police detectives recounting how they came to find Spicuzza, her car, her cell phone, and her dash cam. She was reported missing the same night she was killed after her fiancé couldn’t get in contact with her after she’d gone to do some driving for Uber.

Investigators found her Nissan on Fourth Avenue in Pitcairn on Saturday morning. About four hours later, they found her body in the woods roughly 50 feet from Rosecrest Drive. Detectives said a delivery driver noticed the body and called 911.

Police said she’d been shot once in the back of the head. Detective Greg Renko testified that one spent 9mm Luger shell casing was found about 5 or 6 feet behind Spicuzza’s body. No bullet, he said, was recovered.

The dashboard camera, found along a Penn Hills street, showed a portion of the ride leading up to Spicuzza’s death.

After the seemingly normal ride, the man in the backseat — who police identified as Crew — leans forward and places the gun against Spicuzza’s head.

“Come on,” she said. “I have a family.”

Over and over, she asked, “Why are you doing this?” the footage showed.

Crew told her to keep driving, all while keeping the gun against her head with his right hand and holding onto Spicuzza’s ponytail with the other.

“I’m begging you, I have four kids,” she pleaded. He told her to keep driving and everything would be OK.

The video ends about 9:34 p.m., with Crew reaching forward and yanking the camera off of the dash.

Spicuzza’s iPhone — which was found the next day below the Triboro Expressway — recorded its location every few seconds. It indicated it traveled through Wilkinsburg on Wallace Avenue.

Detective said someone tried to access various money transfer apps before it stopped on Rosecrest Drive near where Spicuzza’s body was found.

Detectives previously detailed the phone’s route from there in the criminal complaint against Crew: It traveled toward Pitcairn and ended up on Mosside Boulevard about 10:30 p.m. The phone moved on Route 30 toward the Westinghouse Bridge and stopped moving about 10:40 p.m. around the same place where it was found.

Crew told police in his first interview that Spicuzza had dropped him off near Dersam and Pershing streets, after which he walked to a Port Authority bus stop in Wilkinsburg. He said he took a bus to Pitcairn. Detectives testified they could find no footage of him on security cameras in either area, nor could they find footage of him on the bus on Port Authority cameras.

Crew’s public defender, Joshua Roberts, did not call any defense witnesses. He asked mainly technical questions of the detectives that Deputy District Attorney Kevin Chernosky called to testify at the hearing. He offered no closing arguments.

Crew did not speak during the hearing, though he conversed often with Roberts’ co-counsel throughout the proceedings. A sheriff’s deputy brought him a chair partway through the hearing. Nearly a dozen of his family and loved ones attended the hearing, sitting opposite members of Spicuzza’s family.

Neither family offered comment after the hearing, nor did Chernosky or Roberts. A judge issued a gag order in the case on March 15.

Crew will remain in the Allegheny County Jail where he is being held without bail. Formal arraignment is scheduled for April 22.

Editor’s note: The Tribune-Review has reviewed the dashboard camera video from Christi Spicuzza’s Uber that was played in court Wednesday and has decided against publishing it.