20 years later, and still no one charged in hit-and-run that claimed life of young mother

It’s been 20 years since a hit-and-run accident claimed the life of a mother.

No one has ever been charged with the crime.

And as Target 11 Investigator Rick Earle discovered, the victim’s brother isn’t holding out hope that it will ever be solved.

Earle asked her brother, Dennis Cecconello what she was doing at the time?

“That’s the mystery,” said Dennis Cecconello.

Twenty years later, it’s still a mystery. And even after all of this time, Dennis Cecconello said he still feels partly responsible for his sister’s death.

She begged him to go out with her that night in October of 2002.

“I do blame myself a lot, because we were so close and I never told her no, and people know us and they always seen us together, and that night for the first time in my life, I told her no, I’m not meeting up with you. I’m doing my own thing and you can do your own thing,” said Cecconello.

Hours later, 27-year-old Christy Cecconello was dead, but her body wasn’t discovered in the grassy area long Rt. 30 near the Great Escape Loung for hours.

“She laid there for three hours,” said Cecconello.

Pennsylvania State Police, who investigated the crime, believe Christy Cecconello was hit and killed by a driver who dragged her about 50 feet, possibly in a four-door, silver Honda Civic that investigators believe stopped in the parking lot of the lounge for several minutes but then took off heading west into Greensburg. Witnesses who were leaving a restaurant across the highway saw the car stop and take off, but they had no idea someone had been hit.

20 years later, no one has been charged with the crime, and Dennis Cecconello still has a lot of questions about what happened that fall night. His sister lived with her 3-year-old son in the apartments just across the street from the Great Escape and he said she would have never left her car in the parking lot of the bar and walked home by herself.

“They’re trying to tell me — which, I know her better than anybody — they’re like ‘oh she tried walking across the street to go home. No, she’s gonna, she’s not leaving her car,’” said Cecconello.

He also said he’s still not sure why she stopped at the lounge but he suspects she may have gone there to see her ex-boyfriend, the father of their child.

He worked at the bar as a bouncer.

For two Fridays after her death, police set up roadblocks and questioned drivers.

They also reached out to body shops in the area but came up empty.

Whatever happened that night, Dennis Cecconello said he isn’t optimistic that his sister’s killer will ever be caught.

“I’m never, I know I’m not going to have closure. I’m never — that much I know in my mind; I’m never going to have that closure. I’m never going to know what truly happened, and if it was an accident or if someone did it on purpose. I’m not gonna know,” said Cecconello, who still struggles with being the last family member to talk to her the night she died.

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