It’s been more than six months since Erin Spilsbury Cooper has spoken with her sister, a therapist who was the outgoing yang to her more reserved yin.
Since she’s heard the advice that once grounded her. Since the call when her mother’s voice told her what she needed to know before it was said: Her sister was dead.
And more than six months later, her family is still waiting for answers.
The man who hit and killed Joslyn Spilsbury with his truck as she sat at a table outside a Millcreek Starbucks hasn’t been arrested or charged. Police haven’t finished and submitted their investigation to prosecutors, who will then decide whether they will file charges against 47-year-old West Walker of Oakley.
Unified Police Department spokesman Melody Gray said the investigation was slowed as Walker’s attorney responded to requests for information. But more recently, she said, police were still waiting for the crime scene to be reconstructed — UPD and Salt Lake City police share a single crime reconstructionist, who until recently served the entire Salt Lake Valley.
No matter the reason, Spilsbury’s mother, Gay Lynne Sylvies, said she was at wits' end by earlier this month, after dozens of calls to police. She said all her family does now is wonder and worry. She said she’s considered showing up at UPD headquarters to demand more information.
“I think I’m going to start getting nasty,” she said. “I’m at that point now.”
Gray said prosecutors should have the case file from police by the first of week of January, allowing them to evaluate whether to file charges. Walker’s attorney, Randall Gaither, declined to comment.
Joslyn Spilsbury, 48, was sitting at a table outside the Starbucks store with two friends on June 8 when the truck driven by Walker left the road and careened into them and another man who chose to sit outdoors.
Spilsbury Cooper’s voice faltered when she recalled the details of that day. “Oh, it’s just the worst thing to ever happen to me. I mean absolutely worst,” she said. “It’s like the ground has gone out from beneath you.”
Salt Lake County Sheriff Rosie Rivera said in a June press conference that investigators initially believed the crash may have occurred because Walker was experiencing a medical issue. Rivera said officers did not find evidence Walker meant to crash into the Starbucks, and they didn’t find obvious signs of intoxication.
Gray said investigators took blood samples from Walker for a toxicology screening. Though police have received the results, she declined to share them with The Salt Lake Tribune.
‘A mess of noise’
(Courtesy Unified Police Department) Joslyn Spilsbury
Roger Kirwan’s back was turned, so he didn’t notice the truck was coming toward him until it was too late.
“It was just an impact, just a mess of noise, and then I was on the ground,” he said during a interview.
Kirwan said he saw Spilsbury afterward, and he instantly knew she was dead. He felt lucky to escape the crash with a punctured lung, broken vertebra, broken ribs and a lot of bruising.
Spilsbury and Kirwan met 20 years ago when he, a native of Australia, was traveling around the United States. They stayed in touch over the years, and he decided to visit her in the days before the crash.
That’s just like Spilsbury — meeting someone by chance and cultivating a friendship, her sister said. Where Spilsbury Cooper said she was “conventional” and quiet growing up, her sister was always bubbly and had a knack for making and keeping friends.
“I don’t think anybody at East High School knew who I was until she showed up and I became Joslyn’s big sister,” Spilsbury Cooper said.
Spilsbury Cooper said she’d never met anyone with more friends than her sister.
Spilsbury’s neighbor, Robert K. Dillard, 84, of Salt Lake City, was the second man at her table. Unified police initially counted one dead and five others injured, including Spilsbury’s friends, Walker and his two children in his truck.
Later, they said another man — 47-year-old Mitcheal Sellen, who had been sitting apart from Spilsbury’s group — also had been critically injured. Responders didn’t initially realize Sellen, who had a previous medical condition and had been found unconscious, also had been hurt in the collision. He was discharged from a hospital in July and he and others have filed a claim against Walker for his medical expenses.
‘It’s sad to lose a good one’
(Courtesy Gay Lynne Sylvies) Gay Lynne Sylvies (left) poses for a picture with her daughter Joslyn Spilsbury. Spilsbury was killed June 8, 2018, when a truck struck her at a Millcreek Starbucks.
As days turned to weeks and then months after the crash, Spilsbury’s relatives said they were left with nothing to do but wait and wonder.
Sylvies has fixated on circumstances surrounding her daughter’s death that she feels are “fishy.”
Spilsbury had been talking to a man she met online before cutting off communication before the crash. That man — who apparently drives a pickup truck nearly identical to Walker’s — started stalking her and appeared at a Millcreek liquor store where Kirwan and Spilsbury were shopping the day before the crash.
Police have said it’s just a coincidence, but it eats at Sylvies.
“Life is weird,” Sylvies said, “There’s no question about that, but [the conclusion from police is] not satisfactory to me.”
Spilsbury Cooper said she disagrees with her mother on that point, although she can understand why her mother wants to better understand what happened that day.
Kirwan also doesn’t think there was a connection between the stalker and the collision. “But what I can say is I don’t believe the driver took an evasive action,” he said.
He did expect the investigation to conclude more quickly. For him, it comes down to whether Walker was experiencing a medical condition during the crash or not.
“Just tell us, and then move on. If that was the case, that’s the case,” he said.
Even when the case comes to some kind of resolution, it won’t make much of a difference to Spilsbury Cooper, she said. If charges are filed, they won’t bring Spilsbury back.
Instead, Spilsbury Cooper said she’s focusing on staying productive and positive, like her sister would have wanted, and trying to be the best aunt she can be to Spilsbury’s young daughter, Lily, a preschooler who has inherited much of her mother’s precociousness.
Still, Spilsbury Cooper said, it’s hard to understand how someone so set on injecting kindness into the world could be taken from it.
“Sometimes I think we could use a little bit more good on this planet,” Spilsbury Cooper said. “And it’s sad to lose a good one.”
