The trial for a Pennsylvania man charged with shooting and killing an 18-year-old student during a road rage encounter won't happen until next year.
David Desper was set to go on trial in the Court of Common Pleas Monday but the case was continued to January when a hearing will be scheduled, his attorney Daniel McCarrigle told NBC10.
Desper, 28, is accused of gunning down Bianca Roberson on June 28.
Police say Desper, of Trainer, Pennsylvania, and Roberson, of West Chester, were engaged in a high-speed "cat-and-mouse game" as both tried to merge into a single highway lane on Route 100 in Chester County. Desper shot Roberson in the head and then sped off, according to investigators. After a dramatic manhunt that spanned multiple states and days, Desper turned himself into authorities on July 2.
Desper is charged with first- and third-degree murder, criminal homicide, possession of an instrument of crime and reckless endangerment.
Those who knew Roberson described her as a “sweet child” with a “full life to live.” On the day she died, the recent high school graduate was returning home from a college shopping trip.
She was set to attend Jacksonville University in Florida this fall and wanted to study criminal justice, her family said.
“There are no words that can describe what he did,” Renee Manon, a close family friend, said. “A mother, a father lost their child. What can [Desper] say? There is nothing he can say.”
“He took something away from us,” Roberson’s father, Rodney Roberson, said after an early court hearing.
“We need to have justice on some other things. We need to take some things from him, make some things painful for him. It’s not about money. We’re just trying to do whatever it is we can to get back at him.”
Desper continues to be held without bail at the Chester County Prison. McCarrigle declined to comment further about the case.
