A man allegedly involved in a hit-and-run crash last week that injured a motorcyclist and killed a Delaware City firefighter was charged with murder today.
State police detectives charged Joseph M. Taye Jr., 28, of the 600 block of Belgian Drive in Bear, with first-degree murder in the Dec. 22 death of 30-year-old Michelle Smith and first-degree assault for injuring motorcyclist Edward Reiss, 30, of New Castle.
Those charges, announced today, are more serious than the charges of manslaughter and second-degree assault Taye initially faced when he was arrested and jailed last week. Taye, who also faces charges of driving while revoked, leaving the scene of a crash and failing to report a crash, initially posted his $37,000 bail and was freed from jail the day after his arrest.
With the new charges, he now is being held without bail in the Young Correctional Institution.
Cpl. Gary Fournier, a state police spokesman, said the original manslaughter charges against Taye were reviewed by the state Attorney General, who upgraded them today to murder, because Smith was killed "performing her official duty."
Reiss, who was critically injured when Taye drove into Smith and him, remains hospitalized in Christiana Hospital in serious but stable condition.
Taye allegedly was at the wheel of a 2004 BMW on Dec. 20, driving at a high rate of speed southbound on U.S. 13, when he sideswiped a marked county police car stationed at the scene of a motorcycle accident Reiss was involved in, lost control of the car and plowed into Reiss and Smith, who was on the ground attending to Reiss' injuries.
Taye then reportedly pulled the BMW, owned by his girlfriend, to a stop on the right shoulder of the highway beyond the crash site, where a light-colored Honda pulled up next to him. A passenger in the Honda allegedly pulled Taye, who is paraplegic, out of his car and put him in the Honda, which then sped away from the scene, police say.
Detectives are still searching for the Honda and the people in it.
Smith, a volunteer firefighter for Delaware City and Volunteer Hose Company of Middletown, was taken to Christiana Hospital, where she died two days later of her injuries.
Republished with permission of The News Journal.
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