There is an extensive Criminal Call sheet for Indiana County Court today, with more than six dozen cases scheduled for judicial review.
Two of them involve high-profile crimes in which the victims were killed.
20-year-old Nathanial Price is charged two counts of criminal homicide and single counts of robbery and conspiracy to robbery in the beating deaths of a Cherryhill Township couple in October of 2016. Co-defendant Justin Stevenson is already serving life in prison without parole after pleading guilty to two counts of second degree murder. Timothy Gardner and Jacqueline Brink were killed in their apartment during an alleged marijuana buy in which police say Stevenson and Price planned to rob Gardner rather than pay him. They jumped him and beat him to death with a metal pipe and then one of the defendants went upstairs and beat Brink to death because she was a witness. Stevenson claims Price killed Brink. Price says it was Stevenson.
Also on the Criminal Call list today is 21-year-old Brady DiStefano of Johnstown, a former IUP student charged with aggravated assault in a case which resulted in the death of his fraternity brother, 20-year-old Caleb Zweig of Rockville, Maryland, in February of 2017.
DiStefano was originally charged with criminal homicide and aggravated assault, but Judge William Martin dismissed the charges based on insufficient evidence that the fight in which the two engaged was to blame for Zweig’s death. Last October, State Superior Court reinstated the aggravated assault charge on appeal by District Attorney Pat Dougherty.
