A man accused of murder in a fatal van wreck on July 4th, 2016 in Petersburg won’t go on trial until next summer.
24-year-old Chris Allen faces charges of murder in the second degree, manslaughter, assault and unsworn falsification in the van crash that killed two young women and injured a third. The four were in a borough van that crashed on South Nordic Drive on the morning of July 4th. The trial was scheduled for next month.
Allen’s defense attorney is working to review evidence from prosecutors with more than one thousand pages of documents. Margret Bergerud, appearing for public defender Jay Hochberg this week said the attorney had three other murder trials that he expected to defend before this one and asked for a trial in late August of next year.
Assistant attorney general Adrienne Bachman argued for a trial sooner, saying there are interested victims in the case and witnesses who should be heard while memories are still fresh. Bachman asked for a March trial date saying other trials that Hochberg is working on have not yet been scheduled.
Superior court judge Trevor Stephens agreed to set a new trial date of July 30th, 2018. The judge hoped that could be as close to a firm trial date as possible.
Allen was released on bail in August. He’s under 24-hour electronic third party monitoring and is living at his parents’ house in Fairbanks with other conditions for his release.
