Driver dozed off just before fatal crash

A New York man told police he dozed off for a few seconds before a fatal rollover crash on Interstate 80 last June.

Jose Padilla, 35, of Brooklyn, was in Magisterial District Court in Weatherly on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing on charges including vehicular homicide.

He waived his right to a preliminary hearing, making way for the charges to proceed to Common Pleas Court.

Ralph Remy, 40, died after he was ejected during the June 18, 2017, crash. He was a back-seat passenger in a 2004 Saturn Vue that Padilla was driving east on Interstate 80 just before midnight when the crash occurred. Padilla told police that the vehicle rolled at least one and a half times, coming to rest on the driver side on the eastbound side of the highway.

Padilla and three passengers were injured.

Police say that Padilla’s driver’s license from the state of New York was suspended at the time of the crash.

The crash occurred east of mile marker 281 in Kidder Township.

Remy, who was not wearing a seat belt, was found outside the vehicle. A deputy coroner pronounced him dead at 12:50 a.m. After an autopsy, his cause of death was ruled to be multiple blunt-force trauma.

When the state police’s Collision Analysis and Reconstruction Unit re-created the crash, they determined there were no road conditions or mechanical problems that contributed to the crash. They determined the crash occurred because Padilla allowed the vehicle to drift onto the center median, then overcorrected, causing the vehicle to spin across both lanes of traffic and roll over.

Charges against Padilla will proceed to Common Pleas Court in Carbon County, where he could face trial or plead guilty to charges.