NORTHAMPTON — The driver of a truck accused of striking and killing a man waiting at an Amherst bus stop in November denied being behind the wheel, but police say they have surveillance footage proving he was the only one in the vehicle.
Amherst Police allege Peter Sheremeta, 20, of Belchertown, was behind the wheel of a stolen pickup truck that struck and killed William E. Wanczyk, 55, of Northampton, on the night of Nov. 6, 2016. Court records unsealed Tuesday provide new details about the crash and subsequent investigation.
Wanczyk was waiting at a bus shelter in front of 141 North Pleasant St. in Amherst, shortly after 9:30 p.m. when a speeding green 2008 Ford F550 truck left the road, struck Wanczyk at the bus shelter and continued a short way before being abandoned, court records state.
Sheremeta pleaded not guilty in May to 10 charges in connection with the case in Eastern Hampshire District Court. A Hampshire Superior Court grand jury indicted Sheremeta on June 6 on eight charges, including motor vehicle homicide while operating under the influence of alcohol, manslaughter and manslaughter while operating under the influence of alcohol.
He is scheduled to be arraigned in Hampshire Superior Court on Friday and is being held at the Hampshire County Jail and House of Correction on $100,000 cash bail.
Police built their case partly on surveillance footage from numerous cameras in downtown Amherst as well as on a Pioneer Valley Transit Authority bus, which captured the crash and moments before and after.
Reviewing the footage, police were able to get a description of the truck’s driver as a white male, wearing a green colored jacket, with short dirty blond hair. Police said Sheremeta was seen wearing a similar outfit in surveillance footage from a business on Montague Road taken around 7:55 p.m. on Nov. 6, or about 90 minutes before the crash.
“Amherst Police did not observe anyone else inside the passenger compartment of the suspect vehicle,” Amherst Police Detective Jamie Reardon wrote in a report that had been impounded under a judge’s order until Tuesday.
Police found the green truck abandoned near a dumpster in a parking lot behind Primo Too Pizza on Triangle Street.
The owner of the truck, Shaul Perry, reported it stolen the morning after the incident. Perry told police it was last seen by him and his employees at a construction site on Summer Street the previous Friday.
Reardon wrote that police learned that one of Perry’s former employees, Paul Leblanc, had knowledge of where a key was stored in the truck and had been using it without permission in the weeks prior to the crash.
Police interviewed Leblanc on Nov. 9. During the interview, Leblanc told police he was with Sheremeta on the night of Nov. 6 and went to a woman’s apartment on Summer Street. Sheremeta was asked to leave the apartment by the woman because he was “intoxicated and acting belligerent,” Reardon wrote.
Leblanc told officers Sheremeta left the apartment on foot.
When police first tried to interview Sheremeta on Nov. 10, he told police he didn’t know anything about the Nov. 6 crash, Reardon wrote.
In an interview with police almost two weeks after the incident, Sheremeta told police on that Sunday night he was with Leblanc and that he was intoxicated “due to the consumption of alcoholic beverages and use of narcotics,” Reardon wrote.
He told police he remembered leaving the woman’s apartment and being at Craig’s Doors, a homeless shelter. An employee at the shelter recalled Sheremeta showing up at the shelter some time after 9:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, and being asked to leave prior to 10:30 p.m. At some point in the evening, Sheremeta blacked out, he told police.
“Peter Sheremeta recalled being inside the suspect vehicle on November 6, 2016 … but was unsure if he was driving,” Reardon wrote.
Sheremeta allegedly told police he “could have been driving prior to the fatal motor vehicle crash.”
In February, police interviewed a man who said he had a conversation with Sheremeta on a PVTA bus in which Sheremeta said Leblanc was still mad at him and the “motor vehicle crash was Paul Leblanc’s fault as Paul Leblanc had grabbed the steering wheel,” Reardon wrote.
Leblanc and the woman told officers in multiple interviews that they were together the night of Nov. 6 at the woman’s Summer Street apartment.
Police also said that when the truck was found following the crash, “items were observed stacked on the passenger side of the bench seat, and none of these items were compressed which indicated that no one else was inside the passenger compartment of the suspect vehicle,” Reardon wrote.
Emily Cutts can be reached at ecutts@gazettenet.com.