Police filed homicide and other charges
Friday against 19-year-old Benjamin Daniel Klinger for the Dec. 4
death of Sammi
Heller on an interstate near Manheim, in south-central Pennsylvania.
Klinger is accused
of crashing on purpose, then killing Heller by sitting on her until she
asphyxiated.
"At first glance, this appeared to be
simply another tragic vehicle accident," Lancaster County District Attorney Craig
Stedman told the Intelligencer Journal/Lancaster New Era. "However, the
police worked hand-in-hand with our forensic experts and saw this was far more
complicated, sinister and certainly criminal."
A man who answered the telephone at
Klinger's home in Elizabethtown, a 20-minute drive from Manheim, said Thursday
that Klinger did not have a lawyer and declined to comment further.
Heller, a senior at J.P. McCaskey High
School, was described in her obituary as athletic and a lover of
motorcycles and horses.
She told a friend that Klinger previously
tried to scare her while driving and that he had threatened to kill them both in
a crash, authorities said. A witness told detectives that Heller said that
Klinger would push her into walls and once pushed her down a set of stairs,
police alleged.
A truck driver who came upon the 2 a.m.
crash heard Heller screaming and was told by 911 operators not to move the crash
victims. When police arrived, Klinger was sitting on top of Heller's head and
torso, according to the arrest affidavit.
Based on medical records, investigators later concluded Klinger was feigning being unconscious.
Detectives recovered marijuana, cash, a
digital scale, a pipe, pills and a black air pistol from the wreckage.
Klinger was also charged with aggravated assault, drug offenses and driving
violations.
Separately, he faces a charge of simple
assault after being accused of running over Heller's foot in May and two counts
of disseminating explicit sexual materials to a minor after being accused of
sending out photos and video of Heller.
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