Did SLO County woman commit murder by causing fatal Highway 227 crash? A jury will decide
A San Luis Obispo County jury will decide whether an Arroyo Grande woman is guilty of murder for allegedly crashing head-on into another vehicle on purpose while high on cocaine, killing the other driver.
Seven weeks after the trial began, jurors commenced deliberations Friday afternoon in the case of Chelsea AnnMarie Stiles.
She’s charged with murder, gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, assault with a deadly weapon, willful cruelty to a child, and DUI-related charges for the series of crashes on and around Highway 227 in December 2019 that resulted in the death of San Luis Obispo resident Terry Tilton.
The driver compartment of 77-year-old Tilton’s Honda Ridgeline was crushed and he was pronounced dead at the scene.
Stiles, whose young daughter was in her SUV at the time of the collision, suffered moderate injuries in the crash and required several days’ hospitalization. Two dogs in the vehicle were also injured, and one was euthanized.
A bag containing a small, usable amount of cocaine was allegedly found in Stiles’ purse inside her wrecked Yukon SUV, which came to rest on its roof in the roadway just north of the Cold Canyon landfill, according to witnesses.
Throughout the weeks of testimony, jurors heard from a long list of CHP officers, medics, eyewitnesses, social workers, toxicology experts, Stiles’ family and former boyfriend, and Stiles herself.
Stiles has remained in San Luis Obispo County Jail custody since her Dec. 1, 2019, arrest.
Her parents and members of Tilton’s family have attended the daily proceedings.
The San Luis Obispo District Attorney’s Office, represented in the trial by assistant district attorney Eric Dobroth and deputy district attorney Benjamin Blumenthal, argues that Stiles committed murder with “implied malice,” which doesn’t require the prosecution to prove she intended to kill anyone.
That type of murder charge requires jurors to find that Stiles caused a death while committing an act that’s dangerous to human life, that she knew was dangerous to human life, and deliberated and acted with conscious disregard for human life, Dobroth explained to the jury in his closing statement Thursday.
If jurors do not find Stiles guilty of murder — which carries a sentence of 15 years to life in prison, plus a one-year enhancement for use of a deadly weapon — they can still find her guilty of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence while intoxicated.
According to Stiles’ testimony and arguments by defense attorney Ilan Funke-Bilu, Stiles suffers from bipolar disorder with past experiences of psychosis, and was diagnosed with anxiety months before the crash.
The defense claims Stiles was the victim of psychological abuse from her ex-boyfriend, who is the father of their daughter.
Through her testimony and Funke-Bilu’s questioning of witnesses, the defense claims another motorist was “chasing” Stiles, causing her to panic and twice rear-end a Honda Pilot with a family inside before the fatal crash about 15 seconds later.
The defense suggests that Stiles hit her head during the crash with the Pilot, causing the head-on crash further down the road.
After meeting for a little over two hours Friday afternoon, jurors were expected to resume deliberations Monday morning.
Timeline of Highway 227 crashes
During the trial, witnesses laid out a fairly straightforward timeline of events. On the heels of a contentious breakup with her former boyfriend, Stiles abruptly took her 18-month-old daughter from a visitation on the evening of Dec. 1, 2019, in the area of Noyes Road south of Highway 227.
Stiles parked the SUV in the rural neighborhood and snorted a line of cocaine to calm herself, all while continuing a text message exchange with the ex-boyfriend, whom The Tribune is not identifying because the case involves children. During the exchange, Stiles wrote, “If we’re going to the gates of hell, you’ll have to follow me.”
“I’m very scared for my baby’s safety right now,” the child’s father is alleged to have texted Stiles minutes before the collision.
Stiles allegedly texted back, “You know what I’m capable of” and “You’re lucky I’m not suicidal,” according to evidence presented to the jury.
Shortly thereafter, Stiles followed a vehicle in the neighborhood, flashing her lights, as the motorist entered a long private driveway. Stiles’ SUV was struck by the property’s gate, and the motorist retreated into her home.
One of the home’s owners, Joaquim Schilling, testified that he thought the motorist was terrorizing his wife and hopped in his car to follow the Yukon as it pulled away at a high speed, he said.
Schilling testified that he followed the SUV down Noyes Road and onto Highway 227 while on the line with 911 dispatchers. The jury heard a recording of the call, in which Schilling tells dispatchers that the SUV twice rear-ended the Honda Pilot, driving it off the road.
Evidence presented to the jury and testimony from the Pilot’s occupants showed that the two impacts buckled the rear of the vehicle, sending glass from the windshield flying over two adults and a child inside the car, which came to rest on the side of the road, disabled.
The second impact was at about 73 mph, according to an accident investigator’s testimony.
Schilling testified that he followed the Yukon past the first crash scene and witnessed an “explosion” as the Yukon hit the Ridgeline from about a quarter of a mile away before the dispatcher warned him against following the vehicle, and he said he turned around at the entrance to the landfill.
Under cross examination by Funke-Bilu, Schilling disputed he was chasing Stiles’s vehicle because he was following too far behind, at one point losing her, though he agreed that “anybody could feel threatened” if they’re being followed in a car.
Funke-Bilu argued that Schilling must have been following closer than he admitted due to Schilling’s testimony that he saw reflections of the dogs’ eyes “flying across the road” at the crash site.
Defendant testifies in murder trial
Crash investigators estimated that Stiles was driving in the oncoming lane of Highway 227 for approximately three seconds before hitting Tilton’s vehicle at 68 mph.
At Sierra Vista Regional Medical Center in San Luis Obispo, a CHP officer testified, Stiles admitted to drinking though it was later revealed she hadn’t consumed alcohol, and said she had taken “a tail” of cocaine. She also admitted on the stand to taking two hits of marijuana about three hours before the crash.
A toxicology test later revealed a very small amount of cocaine in her blood, or enough for an individual to feel mild effects of the drug.
A social worker who interviewed Stiles at the hospital hours after the crash also testified that he asked her if she intended to crash into Tilton’s vehicle.
“She said she had more than enough time to move out of the way, she just didn’t,” Kyle Webb told Dobroth. “She didn’t say yes or no.”
When Stiles took the stand, she testified that she was having a panic or anxiety attack as Schilling’s vehicle followed her as she drove away from the Schilling’s residence.
She also testified that she was afraid of her ex-boyfriend, who she said had never physically abused her but had previously punched a wall next to her head during an argument. She told jurors she feared her ex would physically hurt her, adding that she had been physically abused by another ex-boyfriend, who her most recent ex knew.
Dobroth asked whether Stiles was trying to “hurt” her ex, and whether hurting their daughter would be one way in which to hurt him.
“That thought never occurred to me to have, because that’s my child, too,” Stiles responded confidently.
Stiles also testified that she was wearing her seat belt with the shoulder band tucked under her arm, and that she hit her head in the collisions with the Ridgeline.
However, Stiles was wearing the seat belt properly, a crash investigator testified, noting that Stiles would have otherwise almost certainly have died in the crash with the Ridgeline.
Under cross examination by Funke-Bilu, Stiles addressed other previous text messages to her ex, including two in which she wrote, “Maybe I should kill myself,” and “Maybe the best possible option is for me to just get it over with.”
“Did you seriously consider that?” Funke-Bilu asked.
“No, sir, I didn’t,” Stiles responded, saying the tone of the message was intended to be sarcastic. “It wasn’t meant in seriousness.”
Prosecutor says collisions could have led to more deaths
In his closing arguments, Dobroth called the case “very important” for the community due to the amount of violence committed on unsuspecting motorists and the child.
He painted a picture of Stiles as vindictive and full of rage after ending her “toxic relationship” with the boyfriend.
He said the case could have involved several more casualties due to her reckless driving and her two run-ins with the Honda Pilot, which he described as an enraged Stiles giving the other motorists “the metaphorical middle finger.”
“Try not to overlook the seriousness of these crashes,” Dobroth told jurors. “That’s the crux of this case.”
He noted an accident reconstructionist’s testimony that it appeared Stiles’ SUV was turning in to and “engaging” Tilton’s Ridgeline, which tried to pull away to the right.
Regarding the defense’s assertion that Stiles was being chased by Schilling, the prosecutor said “being chased doesn’t excuse the conduct in this case.”
But Dobroth said she never claimed she was being chased until she went to trial, and made no mention of it to Webb or CHP officers after the crash.
“That would have been one of the first things out of her mouth. But it wasn’t, because it wasn’t true,” he said. “To the extent (she thinks she was being chased), the only evidence we have of that is her own testimony. And I submit to you that’s highly suspect.”
Instead, Dobroth encouraged jurors to focus on Stiles’s statements to emergency workers that she had time to avoid Tilton, but didn’t.
“Not making a choice is making a choice, folks,” he said.
Funke-Bilu opened his closing statement by rhetorically asking jurors how people understand tragedy.
“When people die tragically, there is great suffering and we naturally want that suffering to stop,” he said. “We don’t want tragedy in our lives, we want answers. Understanding this pain explains why Chelsea Stiles was arrested and why the district attorney is prosecuting this tragedy.”
Funke-Bilu described his client “a great mom” who “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” but who had past mental health issues. He recalled witness testimony that she was “dazed” after the crash, appeared “altered” at the hospital, and “did not know where she was.”
He said that investigators rushed to ask his client questions while in that state, saying they “wanted answers quickly.”
The attorney said that Stiles had some sort of a mental health emergency following the visitation with the ex and in her confusion, believed Schilling’s vehicle belonged to a member of her family and was attempting to solicit help. He claimed that Schilling — who he accused of having a “road rage problem” — of chasing Stiles aggressively.
Funke-Bilu said Stiles was honest in her “unvarnished” testimony, and “did not lie to you about anything.”
“She had never experienced this amount of confusion before,” Funke-Bilu said of the events leading to the crash.
This story was originally published December 7, 2020 at 9:00 AM.
