The truck driver accused of murder after the body of a woman was found in the truck cab sounded like he was fighting with someone or trying to kill himself according to a trucker who was parked near the rig.
46-year-old Candice Thompson was found face down between the seats of a semi truck cab over the weekend after a trucker heard and witnessed distressing things coming from inside the truck parked next to him. The driver of the truck in question, 46-year-old Matthew Sidney Watley, has been charged with first and second degree murder for the incident.
Thompson had two large cuts on her back, along with additional wounds on her back, right hand, and face. A hammer and two knives were found inside of the truck cab. She was pronounced dead at 3 a.m. on Sunday, September 24th.
According to the Frederick News Post, the witness truck driver told officers that he was parked on Intercoastal Drive in Frederick County, Maryland when he saw another truck driving fast down the road. Twenty minutes later the truck pulled up near him and parked, and that’s when the witness noticed that the side window was broken. The truck then rolled backwards and Watley seemed to struggle inside the cab for a bit before getting up to stop it. That’s when the witness trucker decided to check on Watley to see if he was okay.
The witness trucker approached Watley’s truck with a flashlight and asked if he was okay. He heard Watley saying “help me, help me” from inside the truck, so he climbed up onto the rig and looked inside, where he saw Watley lying between the truck seats and blood on the center of the dashboard. The witness driver says that it sounded as if Watley was cutting or stabbing himself. The driver then left the rig and went to a nearby guard building to notify them that something was going on and a driver needed help.
“He knew that he needed to step back so that he didn’t get involved,” documents say of the witness driver.
The witness driver stayed nearby to keep an eye on the situation while the guard called for help and heard more yelling and strange sounds from inside the cab. Watley then started throwing things out of the cab, so the witness told him he was going to contact 911 and get him help – that’s when Watley unhitched his trailer and drove to the Costco distribution center.
Police responded to the scene at about 1:30 a.m. and found Watley punching the windshield of his truck and “laying on the horn.” He then fled police at slow speeds before coming to a stop. He refused to exit the rig and was argumentative, so officers tasered him and used pepper spray to subdue him.
Watley drove for PAA Trucking out of New Jersey for six months prior to the incident. The trucking company owner, Parminder Singh, says that Watley was always respectful and he never had any issues with him as a driver. He had paid Watley the day before the incident and Watley was supposed to deliver a load in Jessup, Maryland at 11 p.m. the night before he was arrested. When he didn’t make the load, Singh began calling him and didn’t get an answer until police called at 2:30 a.m. to notify him of the arrest and incident.
Documents show that the Winslow Township Police Department in Winslow, New Jersey had responded to more than one domestic call between Thompson and Watley before.
