Share this @internewscast.com
Left: Calvin Crew (Allegheny County Jail). Right: Christina Spicuzza (Pitcairn Police Department).
A 24-year-old male from Pennsylvania is sentenced to life imprisonment for the abduction, robbery, and ultimately the murder of an Uber driver and mother of four children.
Judge Edward J. Borkowski of the Common Pleas Court on Monday sentenced Calvin Crew to life in a state prison without the possibility of parole for the “brutal, senseless execution” of Christina Spicuzza, according to records examined by Law&Crime.
After a trial lasting four days, a jury of 12 found Crew guilty on February 10 of first-degree murder for the cold-blooded shooting. He was also convicted of kidnapping, robbery, carrying an unlicensed firearm, inflicting severe physical harm, stealing a vehicle, and evidence tampering.
The verdict was handed down exactly three years after the fatal shooting. Under state law, a conviction for first-degree murder results in a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.
As Law&Crime previously reported, Spicuzza was initially reported missing after her family said they last heard from her when she went out to work as an Uber driver on Feb. 10, 2022. But authorities two days later found her car in Pitcairn, a borough east of Pittsburgh. A delivery driver later discovered her body in a wooded area in neighboring Monroeville. She had suffered a fatal gunshot wound to the head.
Authorities said that Crew on the night of Feb. 10, 2022, asked his then-girlfriend to get him an Uber using her account. Spicuzza picked Crew up at about 9:11 p.m. that evening and never returned home.
Love true crime? Sign up for our newsletter, The Law&Crime Docket, to get the latest real-life crime stories delivered right to your inbox.
Dashcam footage from inside of Spicuzza’s vehicle showed Crew, wearing a full black ski mask, sitting in the backseat of the car behind Spicuzza, then slide to the center of the backseat and put a gun to the victim’s head. Spicuzza can be seen taking her right hand off the steering wheel and feeling the barrel of the gun pressed against her before pleading with Crew.
“Come on man, I’ve got a family. What are you doing?” she asks.
“I’ve got a family too. Now drive,” Crew responds.
Crew continues to demand that Spicuzza “drive” as she pleads with him to stop, telling him: “I’ve got four kids.”
“Do what I say, and everything will be OK,” Crew tells her at one point, then reaches up and grab the camera from the dash.
The dashcam was found by police five days after the victim’s body was discovered.
Authorities said that Crew’s girlfriend had been having trouble sending him money via an app just before the murder. The following day, Crew texted her, “Im not going to jail if we get caught,” authorities said.
Prosecutors said there was a “trail of overwhelming digital and video evidence” that led to Crew’s conviction.
“The evidence admitted at trial included 422 individual exhibits submitted to the jury along with testimony from Crew’s girlfriend, who had purchased the Uber ride for him and dashcam video from inside Spicuzza’s car depicting Crew holding a gun to the back of Spicuzza’s head telling her to ‘keep driving,”” the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office said in a news release following the guilty verdict. “Further evidence included Crew’s fingerprint, cell phone GPS records, Uber records, the bullet casing and license plate readers used to track the movements of the car. ”
More from Law&Crime: ‘She never saw it coming’: Man shot ex-girlfriend through eye as she sat next to best friend before ‘night on the town’ to celebrate breakup