SCHOHARIE – Jaclyn Schnurr, the Wells College professor who lost both her husband and her father in the Oct. 6, 2018 Schoharie limousine crash, took to the witness stand Thursday in the trial of limo operator Nauman Hussain.
Schnurr said on that Saturday afternoon, she and other members of her extended family were in town for her cousin’s wedding and had all met up in the parking lot of the Apple Barrel Cafe hoping to grab something to eat before checking into their hotel. She had arrived with her husband Brian Hough and their son Benjamin in their Toyota Highlander and parked near her brother-in-law’s car on the edge of the lot.
Everyone was in good spirits and glad to get out and stretch their legs and catch up with one another. They decided to get their food to go because the restaurant was so crowded.
“We were all there having fun,” Schnurr told the jury. “We were all just talking because we hadn’t seen each other in a while.”
Waiting for their lunch order, Schnurr’s husband was leaning against the passenger side of their SUV while she and her dad James Schnurr leaned against the other side, talking. She was joking with her father about his upcoming birthday when she started hearing a noise coming from across the highway.
“It was just getting louder and louder,” Schnurr testified under questioning by Schoharie County District Attorney Susan Mallery. “I kept thinking, what is making that noise?”
The noise was the sound of a white 2001 Ford Excursion stretch limo coming down Route 30 with 17 passengers aboard. Although Schnurr didn’t know it at the time, the driver had lost control of the vehicle. The limo was headed straight for the intersection of Route 30A – and the parking lot where Schnurr and her family were waiting for their sandwiches.
“I saw a white blur coming toward the car, and I realized that it was probably going to hit us,” Schnurr testified.
It did. The Excursion, which weighed more than six tons and had reached a speed in excess of 100 mph coming down the steep hill, struck the Highlander and then veered into a stream bed off to the side.
Schnurr said the only thing she remembers is being on the ground suddenly, alone. She looked around for her dad and husband.
“I pushed myself up and looked around – they were nowhere to be found,” Schnurr said. “Then I ran toward the trees and I came across my father. He was in the bushes at the edge of the parking lot.”
“Was he alive at that time?” Mallery asked.
“No,” Schnurr replied.
“Did you ever see your husband?” Mallery asked.
“I did not,” Schnurr said.
The emotional testimony was the first by a family member of the 20 victims who died from the crash that day in what remains one of the worst highway transportation disasters in U.S. history in more than a decade.
All 18 people aboard the limo, including driver Scott Lisinicchia lost their lives due to their injuries. State and federal investigations blamed the crash on “catastrophic” brake failure.
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Hussain, 33, who told a State Police investigator later that night that he had been put in charge of his father’s limo business about six months before while his dad was overseas, is on trial in Schoharie County Court on charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Mallery contends Hussain rented out the Excursion knowing that its brakes were bad and that Lisinicchia wasn’t qualified to drive the 18-passenger vehicle.
Hussain has maintained his innocence, and his attorney Lee Kindlon says his client had the Excursion’s brakes fixed five months before the crash at the Mavis Discount Tire shop in Saratoga Springs, but that Mavis didn’t do the repairs he paid for and lied to him by falsifying the invoice for the work. Hussain faces up to 15 years in state prison if convicted on the manslaughter charge.
Mallery also called several other witnesses who had seen the limo earlier that day as it drove from its pickup point in Amsterdam down country roads into Schoharie County. It is unclear if Lisinicchia was lost at the time he was driving down Route 30 toward the Apple Barrel because the route was not the most direct for the trip to Cooperstown.
Before Schnurr was called to the stand, Mallery called other witnesses who had come across the Excursion as it had made its way from Amsterdam. They testified of a strong burning smell coming from the unusually large limo and that it was making a loud noise as if it had an exhaust problem.
Holly Wood, the Esperance woman who was sitting with her daughter in her car at the intersection of Route 30 and Route 30A across from the Apple Barrel when the Excursion was coming down the hill, thought she was going to die that day. She grew emotional recalling as she waited to take a left turn toward the village.
“I heard this god-awful noise coming behind me,” Wood told the jury. “It was just so loud and unusual.”
Wood said she looked into her rear-view mirror and could see the large, white limo coming down the hill, coming straight for her car.
“I froze, and I told my daughter to hold on because I thought that was it,” Wood testified.
Wood said the limo swerved out of the way to the left of where she was stopped and was headed right for a blue SUV in the parking lot.
“I just saw the blue car go flying, and then the limo hit the gully,” Wood said. “It (the back end of the Excursion) literally came up off the ground and slammed down.”
Wood and her daughter called 911 and ran toward the crash. She said remembers seeing someone on the ground who appeared to be dead and hearing someone tell her daughter to stay away from the limo as others were trying to check for survivors inside the limo.
“After that, it was just chaos, pure chaos,” Wood said.