It looked as if a couple of teenagers were drag racing on Route 28, a witness said. In reality, the grown women peeling past her were involved with the same man and had months of "bad blood between them," as one lawyer put it.

The two cars sideswiped each other, witnesses said, sending one into oncoming traffic and a head-on collision. It went airborne and flipped onto its roof, killing Timira Brown, 25, of the North Side, and her son, Taymon, 4. Her 9-month-old daughter, Jadion, survived.

A city homicide detective described the crash scene in court as "probably the worst accident I'd seen in 28 years."

	Related coverage Crash reconstructed

Accident reconstruction specialists are convinced Jamie Lynn Upsher rammed Ms. Brown's car, causing the fatal crash Aug. 10, 2003.

The question lawyers are tangling with is whether Ms. Upsher is guilty of deliberate, premeditated first-degree murder. When the trial resumes tomorrow, the Common Pleas jury will have to sort out whether Ms. Upsher was responsible for a horrific accident or whether she used her Chevy Lumina as a weapon in a willful and intentional homicide.

Bad blood
At the heart of the feud was Wayne Williams, who was in jail on drug charges when the conflict between the women reached a boiling point.

Between March and July 2003, Ms. Upsher, 26, of East Liberty, filed three police reports against Ms. Brown and Ms. Brown filed for a protective order against Ms. Upsher. One report involved a claim by Ms. Upsher that, as she left Allegheny County Jail after visiting Mr. Williams, she caught Ms. Brown flattening the tires and smashing the windows of her car. Ms. Brown was arrested and charged.

A few months later, Ms. Upsher told police that Ms. Brown had broken into her East Liberty apartment and trashed it. Ms. Brown was arrested and charged with intimidating a witness.

Ms. Brown's child-care provider testified that, in June 2003, she walked in on a phone conversation between the two women. Ms. Brown was "hysterical" and crying. Ms. Brown said Ms. Upsher had threatened her life, saying she and her children "were gonna be dead and stinking."

Ms. Upsher told police in July 2003 that Ms. Brown had thrown punches at her on Centre Avenue. She filed an assault charge, but Ms. Brown was not arrested.

A defense lawyer traced 30 calls during the same time period from Ms. Brown's cell phone to the defendant's home. The prosecution contends that Ms. Upsher sent a barrage of calls to Mr. Williams' cell phone.

The final threat is alleged to have come moments before Ms. Brown's death, after the two had seen each other on the 40th Street Bridge and turned onto Route 28. Ms. Upsher told police that Ms. Brown slowed at the 31st Street Bridge signal and rolled down a window. She uttered a profanity and said, "You're going to die tonight. I'm going to kill you."

The trial
Charles Agnew told jurors he was driving into Pittsburgh the evening of Aug. 10, 2003, when he alerted his wife to a car racing up behind them in the slow lane.

He testified last week that the car, Ms. Upsher's Lumina, swept past them into the fast lane and Ms. Brown's Ford Focus passed outside the Lumina, straddling the double yellow line of the four-lane highway. Another witness, who was headed outbound on Route 28, saw Ms. Upsher's car swerve into the fast lane, cutting off Ms. Brown's car, forcing it into oncoming traffic.

The two cars sideswiped each other at about 69 mph in a 35 mph zone. Ms. Brown tried to steer back into the fast lane, but collided head-on with another car. Ms. Upsher told police she was rear-ended -- a claim that the prosecutor dismissed as impossible.

Ms. Brown's daughter Jadion, Ms. Upsher and two others were hurt in the four-car pileup, which a city homicide detective described in court as "probably the worst accident I'd seen in 28 years."

In the last five years, 125 accidents have occurred on that notorious stretch of four-lane highway between the 31st Street bridge and East Ohio Street and 41 people have been injured. PennDOT officials expect to begin an improvement project in 2009 that would alleviate many of the problems that lead to crashes.

Intent
The homicide trial hinges on whether Ms. Upsher, who has no prior record, intended to hit her rival and whether she did so with malice.

Getting a first-degree murder conviction in a road-rage case is "very rare," said William C. Head, a defense lawyer in Atlanta.

Daniel B. Rathbone, a traffic engineer who co-authored a study of road rage in 50 metropolitan areas for the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety, said he could find no similar incidents in which the victim died after going through "many, many cases."

Indeed, the district attorney's office took seven months following the accident before filing the homicide charges.

Mr. Head chaired a National Highway Safety Administration committee under the Clinton administration that proposed a model law attaching penalties to various levels of aggressive driving.

Although no federal law was enacted, the committee concluded that knowing the victim was less important than a defendant's hitting the victim on purpose.

"When you strike the bumper of a car, you're not touching the body of the person. With a baseball bat, you know what's going to happen. Striking a car, the person could have just been trying to make a point but not create a deadly situation," he said.

Assistant District Attorney Stephie Kapourales told jurors in her opening statement that the volatile history between the women and Ms. Upsher's actions on Route 28 proved the crash was intentional and fueled by malice. Ms. Upsher passed up opportunities to make a right turn and get away from Ms. Brown if she feared for her life, Ms. Kapourales said.

In addition, police investigators testified, Ms. Upsher's vehicle hit Ms. Brown's vehicle, setting the pileup in motion.

"The issue is who caused this accident," she said. The defendant is liable if her "actions are the direct cause of the victim's death." The evidence, she said, indicates "Jamie Upsher was the cause of this accident."

Defense attorney Patrick Thomassey told jurors his client was "going fast, because she was trying to get away from this maniac, Timira Brown, who, an hour before, had strapped two kids in her car while she was stoned on dope," he said. A toxicologist testified that Ms. Brown had smoked marijuana slightly more than an hour before her death, but he could not say whether delayed reflexes or poor judgement had been factors in her death.

The defense says none of the prosecution experts pinpointed what caused Ms. Brown's car to go out into oncoming traffic before the two women's cars collided. At the time of contact, Ms. Brown's right front tire was on the double yellow line, facing outbound motorists.

Their theory is that Ms. Brown, who had a record of trying to harm Ms. Upsher, was stoned, fuming mad and out of control. Ms. Upsher was trying to get away from a person who had just threatened to kill her.

If jurors don't find Ms. Upsher guilty of willfully killing her rival, they might go for the middle ground and find her guilty of third-degree murder. Both degrees require that the defendant show malice.

They might conclude that the defendant exercised gross negligence, but had no specific intent to kill. In this case, they could convict Ms. Upsher of involuntary manslaughter.

Or, after they begin deliberations tomorrow, they might find she is not guilty of killing Ms. Brown or her son.

They will have to rule on a number of additional charges, including recklessly endangering the lives of Raymond and Marion Cherry, who were driving north, and on the aggravated assaults on Ms. Brown's infant daughter and two other motorists, Chaka Hall and Willa Mae Tot, who also were driving north on Route 28 that night.