crash<\/a> Jan. 3, 2025, along Route 183 in Penn Township.<\/p>\nScherr entered open pleas, meaning there was no agreement between prosecutors and his attorney on a sentence.<\/p>\n
Following his prison sentence, President Judge M. Theresa Johnson ordered Scherr to serve two years of special probation.<\/p>\n
State police said Scherr caused the two-vehicle crash by trying to pass a vehicle in a no passing zone of the two-lane road and striking the victim\u2019s vehicle. The 2-year-old girl in that vehicle died after suffering head and neck injuries, and the girl\u2019s mother suffered serious injuries, troopers said. Scherr was also injured.<\/p>\n
According to court documents:<\/p>\n
Scherr was driving his pickup truck south on Route 183, also known as Bernville Road, at about 5 a.m.<\/p>\n
Erikka Phillips, 27, of Reading, was driving northbound with her daughter, Journii Crawley, 2, who was restrained in a child seat in the rear of the SUV.<\/p>\n
Another vehicle pulled out from Church Road into the southbound lane of Route 183, and Scherr tried to pass it as he neared the top of a hill. That driver looked in his rearview mirror and saw the collision between Scherr\u2019s vehicle and Phillips\u2019 SUV in the northbound lane.<\/p>\n
Phillips told troopers that she had tried to swerve to the right but was unable to avoid the oncoming truck.<\/p>\n
Crawley was transported to Reading Hospital, where she was pronounced dead by the Berks County coroner\u2019s office.<\/p>\n
Phillips and Scherr were also taken to Reading Hospital for treatment.<\/p>\n
The state police investigation showed that Scherr had been driving at speeds near 90 mph in the 55-mph zone. The investigation also confirmed that Scherr caused the crash by illegally attempting to pass another vehicle and striking Phillips, troopers said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Schuylkill County man has been sentenced to 4 1\/2 to 9 years in state prison for causing…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4524,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[349,46,182,139,29951,28,128,130,129,231,706],"class_list":["post-220466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-berks-county","tag-courts","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-penn-township","tag-pennsylvania","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-schuylkill-county","tag-top-stories-reg"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}