It was a pair of incidents that shocked residents of the Upper Ohio Valley and elevated the local area to national news this week, and now people await additional details to be released by officials of the Wheeling Police Department.
Philip Stahl, the public information officer for the police department, said, “There’s no new information at this point, but there are still a lot of questions the investigators are asking to discover the answers they are seeking.”
Early Thursday morning an accident took place in front of the Warwood Commons, a development that includes a McDonald’s and a Save-A-Lot grocery stores. A female from Bridgeport, Ohio, 54-year-old Michelle Lynn Czoka, was struck by a pickup truck on W.Va. Route 2. The unnamed driver of the truck called 911, according to authorities, but when officers arrived to the scene, the victim could not be located.
Minutes later, the Ohio County 911 Center received a call concerning an incident along the Exit 2B onramp along Interstate 70 eastbound. After investigators gathered the facts from both locations, they concluded a driver that navigated around the Warwood accident somehow snagged the victim and carried her until other motorists flagged down the driver.
“It all came together quickly thanks to the 911 calls and the hard work of the officers,” said Lou Vargo, director of the Ohio County EMA Department. “It was a dark and rainy morning in Wheeling that day, but the driver of the pickup truck called 911 immediately, and the officers responded immediately.
“When the victim could be located, it was a mystery, but then the second call was received by dispatchers, and that’s when the facts of the tragedy really came together,” he continued. “But there are still a lot of questions and several conversations that need to take place, and the officers are working on reconstructing both incidents.”
How the victim became attached to the second vehicle is one question, and another is what southbound path the motorist traveled to reach the interstate onramp. The driver could have opted for a wrong-way trip up Pike Street in North Wheeling to National Road, and then gained access to I-70 near Perkins Restaurant. Or, the motorist may have chosen to follow the highway to downtown Wheeling in order to turn left on 10th Street, and then enter Wheeling Tunnel on Market Street.
“As far as I know, our police department hasn’t encountered a case like this before,” Vargo said. “Most of the crashes that have taken place during my 30-plus years with the EMA have been isolated to one scene, but with this tragedy we had investigators at two very different scenes simultaneously. I know the officers are working very hard to get a lot of answers.
“I am aware there’s a lot of speculation taking place on social media, and I think those people should stop and think about the folks involved,” he said. “I know it’s hard to imagine, but it happened. Three people got up that morning, got ready for work, and then all three of those lives changed forever. That’s why we call accidents like this a tragedy, but it was tragic for all three of them.”
