Joshua Rose needed a doctor, but the hospital is not where his young friends took him.
Instead, the trio — two men and a woman — loaded the 21-year-old into a black Ford truck and drove past the emergency room, authorities said, despite the possibility that Rose may have been experiencing a drug overdose. Then they headed out of town.
Between there and the woods where police found Rose’s body, authorities say, the trio placed a plastic bag over their friend’s head and strangled him with jumper cables while driving down the interstate.
When they stopped to get gasoline at a Sunoco station, Rose’s body, still in the front seat of the truck, was disguised in a hat and sunglasses. Security cameras captured them on film.
And once they reached that wooded spot in Susquehanna County, right beside the railroad tracks, they pushed his body over an embankment, documents say, turned around and drove away.
Rose was missing for five days before authorities found him. This week, the 21-year-old’s trio of friends were arrested in connection to his death.
Preston Layfield, 19, Tyler Mirabelli, 22, and Amanda Wayda, 20, face charges of aggravated assault and conspiracy, and investigators with the Pennsylvania State Police told CBS affiliate WYOU that additional, more serious charges are pending the results of an autopsy to determine cause of death.
