Jury selection underway in Venango Township homicide case
Jury selection began Thursday for next week’s trial of a Hilliards woman charged in the March 2023 shooting death of her boyfriend.
Jessica Lee Callahan, 20, is facing a homicide charge in the March 20 death of Tyler J. Whitlatch. He was 31 years old.
State police said Callahan called emergency dispatchers and said she had shot Whitlatch at a residence on Kohlmeyer Road, Venango Township, and was taking him to the rodeo grounds in Washington Township.
Responding troopers found a car parked between the rodeo grounds and a cemetery on Route 38 with Callahan seated near the vehicle talking on a phone, according to testimony from her preliminary hearing in April 2023.
On the other side of the vehicle, troopers found Whitlatch on his back. He was not moving and didn’t appear to be breathing, police said. A trooper rendered emergency aid until ambulance crews arrived, but he was pronounced dead at the scene.
The county coroner’s officer determined he died from a gunshot wound to the torso.
Callahan told police she and Whitlatch had been in a relationship since October 2022, and the shooting followed an altercation at the home of one of her relatives. She is being held in the county prison without bail.
