COLUMBUS (WCMH) – The man accused of killing an Ohio State student and a Columbus city engineer took the witness stand in his own defense Thursday.
Terrance Trent, 63, is charged with two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide for the deaths of Stephanie Fibelkorn and Bill Lewis, as well as two counts of vehicular assault.
The defense called just three witnesses Thursday, the last of which was Trent himself. He said he was driving his truck down Broad Street while being physically beaten with a can of soda the day of the crash.
Trent said on December 12, 2014, he was going to fix plumbing at a woman’s house he knew from church. He was driving with another woman he was hesitant to describe as his girlfriend. He said they started fighting while he was driving down Broad Street and he panicked.
“I was someplace else, mentally,” Trent said. “I remember my hands weren’t even on the steering wheel part of the time.”
But the prosecutor questioning him on cross-examination didn’t buy the story, saying Trent spent 20 years as a truck driver.
“You of all people should know how important it is to stop a rolling missile when things are about to go wrong,” one prosecutor said.
Trent described himself as a careful driver, though he said he navigated the downtown streets that day without remembering the drive.
“If I was going 60 miles an hour, I was doing a pretty good job,” Trent said.
“You got to be kidding me,” the prosecutor responded. “That’s not a great job. You killed two people.”
The families of those two people who were killed, Stephanie Fibelkorn and Bill Lewis, were in the courtroom as Trent took the stand.
While the prosecution and defense asked the jury to return different verdicts today, both sides agreed it was a tragic crash that killed two people, and no matter what the outcome, those families will never be the same.
“It’s obvious the pickup truck that he was driving hit that school bus,” Stephen Dehnart said. “It’s obvious that that school bus caused the death of those two people.”
But he said his client didn’t act recklessly to make that happen. The prosecution disagreed.
“He made these choices,” a prosecutor said. “He chose to get in the car. He chose to drive down Broad Street. It was his choice. His hands on the wheel. His foot on the gas pedal.”
The trial is now in the hands of the jury as they were dismissed for the day after deliberating for several hours.
