McBride

CAIRO — The legal counsel for a teenager charged with vehicular homicide for her involvement in a fatal January wreck is seeking to quash her indictment.

Moultrie attorney Jon Forehand submitted a special demurrer Monday which alleges that the state made “false and inflammatory allegations” in the indictment of Anna McBride.

The demurrer states that the listed speed limit of 55 mph at the site of the accident which the state used in McBride’s indictment is inaccurate and that it should therefore be dismissed.

Pretrial motions are set to be heard August 8.

McBride, 18, has pleaded not guilty to counts of felony vehicular homicide, reckless driving and speeding.

According to the indictment, McBride was driving 116.8 mph at the time she was involved in the collision that resulted in the death of Thomasville High School senior Levi Knop.

A specialized collision reconstruction team (SCRT) from the Georgia State Patrol forensically reconstructed the accident using data obtained from McBride’s 2014 Volvo airbag control module, which Trooper Daniel Joiner, the lead investigator, compared to a black box in an airplane.

Forehand submitted additional motions to suppress the evidence from the SCRT analysis and to bar the testimony of the investigators on the grounds that the data collected from the airbag control module and other recording devices was obtained without a proper search warrant.

Data obtained from the two-month SCRT investigation was used as the basis for the charges the state levied against McBride, who was indicted by a grand jury last month.

The defense further argues that the evidence the SCRT found during its investigation is “not the product of reliable science” and is therefore inadmissible in court.

District Attorney Joe Mulholland said SCRTs are typically the primary investigators in situations involving fatalities on Georgia roadways.

“They’ve got specialized training on how to find out how fast the vehicles were going and basically what caused the wreck,” Mulholland said.

Jury trials are scheduled to begin in September.