Trial Date Set For Shepherd For Fatal School Bus Accident
ROCHESTER — A trial date has been set for the woman accused of causing the deaths of three Tippecanoe Valley students and seriously injuring a fourth.
According to Fulton County Prosecutor Michael Marrs, Alyssa Shepherd, 24, will stand trial Oct. 15 at 8:30 a.m., nearly a year after the fatal accident that killed Xzavier and Mason Ingle and their sister, Alivia Stahl, and seriously injured Maverik Lowe on Oct. 30, 2018.
Marrs told the press that the conference was held to finish up discovery from both sides. He said the trial is expected to last two to three days.
Shepherd is being charged with three felony counts of reckless homicide, level 5 felonies; one count of passing a school bus with the stop arm extended causing injury, a class A misdemeanor; and a charge of criminal recklessness, a level 6 felony, which he said was a charge added late in the process.
“We filed charges immediately when the incident occurred,” he said. “The former prosecutor discussed a couple days later that we probably should add criminal recklessness. But we thought about it from the beginning.”
“At this point, there’s no plea agreement,” said Marrs. “We have one more pre-trial on July 10 at 1:15 p.m. just to make sure we don’t have anything … there’s quite a bit of discovery in the case between videos and paperwork.”
Marrs said he thought the future date was reasonable and said it fell inside the one-year anniversary of the incident. “Given the magnitude of the case, I think everyone wants to make sure they’re ready to go,” he said.
Marrs was also asked by media at the press conference about the high profile of the case and whether it posed a danger for a tainted jury. He said there are no plans to pull jurors in from outside the area or to move the trial outside of Fulton County. “I don’t see that at this time,” he said. “No party involved is requesting that. So, we’ll see what we can do here.”