Murder Trial: Attorneys Paint Different Pictures of Responsibility

No one heard a horn, just screeching metal and the earsplitting impact of a 25-ton 18-wheeler crashing into a building, the L.A. County deputy district attorney said Friday in opening statements of the murder trial of Marcos Costa.

The jury of 10 men and two women, as well as friends and relatives of the two people killed in the Apr. 1, 2009 accident in La Cañada, craned their necks as prosecutor Carolina Lugo played a video recorded by a municipal bus on that fateful day.

The video shows the truck, which had lost its brakes, slamming into the old – the “nightmarish’’ end to a trip the prosecutor said Costa had ample warning never to have made.

In stark contrast to Lugo’s opening remarks was defense attorney Edward Murphy’s statement that the 46-year-old Costa, who spent most of the drive that day doing paper work in the back of the cab, inspected his brakes at the start of every trip. And they were fine at the outset.

Costa switched seats with his co-driver and climbed behind the wheel just north of La Cañada Flintridge. He tried to follow a map penned by a firefighter who pulled over the brakes-smoking rig, Murphy said. Firefighter Juan Palomino, as previously , warned of the steep grade ahead.

But Costa, a pastor of 20 years who took up truck driving to earn extra money, cannot be guilty of murder, vehicular manslaughter or felony reckless driving because, it was a “horrible accident’’ and “He did everything under the sun to try to stop that truck,'' Murphy said in Judge Darrell Mavis' Pasadena courtroom.

Murphy and Lugo dispute whether it was illegal or merely unadvisable to drive a 25-ton rig on the Angeles Forest Highway.

The Prosecutor’s Points During Opening Remarks:

• Angel Posca and his 12-year-old daughter, Angelina, were killed when Costa’s car carrying big rig plowed into their Ford sedan; they died instantly.

• A firefighter warned the road Costa and his co-driver were traveling would end in a bustling commercial city; Costa did not turn back.

• Witnesses saw Costa’s rig cross over the center line and emit smoke and stench from failing brakes.

• When Costa’s rig rammed into the Poscas’ car, it dragged it into Foothill Boulevard.

• As the truck careened down Angeles Crest Highway into the busy intersection of Foothill Boulevard, there was no horn – no warning, just the screeching sound of scraping metal.

The Defense’s Points During Opening Statements:

• Costa spent most of the fateful day’s trip in the back of the cab, doing paperwork.

• Costa inspected his brakes at the beginning of every trip.

• Neither Costa nor his co-driver had ever driven on the winding, narrow roads through the Angeles National Forest.

• Costa relied on his Global Positioning System –which in 2009, did not show hills or grade – to illustrate the best route from Littlerock, CA to Anaheim. That route took him down the Angeles Forest Highway.

• Costa passed an officer from the Los Angeles Police Department who was writing a traffic ticket, and the officer did not stop Costa from continuing on.

Testimony from Yanette Posca, the victims’ wife and mother, is expected to begin Monday at 11 a.m.