CAPE MAY COURT HOUSE, N.J. - It wasn't until school the next day, when he learned that a classmate and her sister had been killed in a car accident, that Joshua Wigglesworth realized he had played a role in the tragedy.
"I just broke down," Wigglesworth, 20, testified yesterday at the trial of a New Jersey state trooper charged with two counts of vehicular homicide in the deaths of Jacqueline and Christina Becker on Sept. 27, 2006.
No one disputes that Trooper Robert Higbee raced through a stop sign at Tuckahoe and Stagecoach Roads in the Marmora section of Upper Township around 10 that night and broadsided the minivan the girls were in.
But a Cape May County Superior Court jury must decide whether his actions were criminally negligent. If convicted on both counts, Higbee could face 20 years in prison.
The Dodge van was struck by Higbee's cruiser with such force that driver Jacqueline, 17, a student at Ocean City High School, and Christina, 19, who attended Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, were thrown through the passenger's window and died at the scene.
The trooper, who was doing 70 m.p.h. according to the data recorder in his cruiser, has said that he was chasing a speeder and wanted to "close the gap" before turning on his siren and emergency lights.
That speeder was Wigglesworth, who testified that he had no idea anyone had died in the accident he thought he saw in his rearview mirror as he continued on to his mother's house in Marmora. He said he was rushing home to meet a curfew.
In a calm voice, Wigglesworth said that he was traveling north on Stagecoach Road, doing about 50 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone, when he passed Higbee's police vehicle. He immediately slowed, he said, and checked his rearview and side mirrors to see if the cruiser, which had been traveling the opposite way on Stagecoach, had made a U-turn.
Still checking his mirrors, Wigglesworth said, he continued north at the proper speed and made the stop at Tuckahoe.
By this time, Wigglesworth said, he thought the police car had turned around and was following him about a quarter-mile away. He lost sight of the cruiser's headlights when he went over a hill and down a small incline.
Wigglesworth testified that he then heard a loud sound behind him, "like some sort of collision," and that when he looked to the rear, he saw "a combination of lights going off in the wrong direction."
"The lights were shooting into the woods. They weren't on the road anymore, just lights," Wigglesworth told First Assistant Prosecutor David Meyer.
Wigglesworth, who now lives in South Seaville and works as a tile setter, said he went home and talked to his mother and a friend about the accident when the emergency siren at a nearby volunteer fire house began to blare.
The next morning, he said, he bought a newspaper to learn what had occurred. A brief article about the accident made no mention of fatalities.
It was not until he reached school that the Ocean City High senior heard about the Beckers' deaths and realized what must have happened.
He confided in his girlfriend and two friends, but he didn't tell police. Nearly a month later, law enforcement officers arrived at the school to question Wigglesworth, who at first denied involvement.
"I was scared. I didn't know what to do," said Wigglesworth, who was not charged in the accident.
Earlier yesterday, another former classmate of Jacqueline Becker's testified.
Michael Taylor, 20, was a passenger in a vehicle driven by his father that became involved in the collision when it was struck by the Beckers' van in the intersection.
Taylor testified that he saw Higbee's vehicle accelerate just before it ran the stop sign at the intersection.
His testimony matched his father's on Monday and information obtained from the vehicle's data recorder.
The younger Taylor said he was in shock when he went to the other vehicles to check on their occupants.
He testified that Higbee shouted at him when he inquired about the trooper's condition and asked if he could provide a towel for Taylor's father, whose head and nose were bleeding.
As he approached the Beckers' van, "something came over me," Taylor said.
"I turned around and went back to our vehicle and told my dad that those people didn't make it."
Testimony in the trial, which is expected to last more than a month, will resume tomorrow.
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