WASHINGTON, Pa. — Popular, outgoing, smart and a football standout, Tim McNerney’s life seemed touched by destiny.

It would end by chance.

“Wrong place, wrong time,” Washington Police Lt. Dan Stanek described it.

Closing time came calling at 2 a.m. Oct. 4. McNerney, 21, of Penn Township and a buddy left one bar, a favorite of students at Washington & Jefferson College, where he was enrolled as a senior and played running back for the Presidents.

Just two blocks away, three men he had never met, left another bar.

The random encounter was put into motion.

McNerney and his friend, 22-year-old Zachary DeCicco of Jefferson Hills, Allegheny County, a fellow W&J student and football player, headed home to their dorms, only a short walk away.

The three strangers — Adam R. Hankins, 23, of Washington, Pa.; Troy L. Simmons, 23, of East Pittsburgh; and Eric D. Wells, 24, of Penn Hills — headed to Hankins’ home nearby.

McNerney’s last steps would take him to South College and East Maiden streets. There, he and DeCicco crossed paths with Hankins, Simmons and Wells, police said.

“It’s not a bad area,” Stanek said. “It was a fluke. It was happenstance.”

The accidental meeting suddenly turned violent.

“I don’t think (Hankins, Simmons and Wells) were actively looking to assault or rob anyone,” Stanek said. “But when opportunity presented itself, obviously, they took it.”

Police suspect the trio ambushed McNerney and DeCicco.

“Tim was punched one time, on the chin,” Stanek said. “It knocked him back. He fell and hit his head. It left him unconscious.”

DeCicco was also attacked, pummeled, investigators said.

“Zach was struck more times than Tim,” Stanek said.

But DeCicco, despite a broken nose and other injuries, managed to get away from his attackers. He ran away, hightailing it toward campus.

The alleged assailants also beat it, but not before lifting McNerney’s wallet and Apple iPhone.

They would soon learn what McNerney’s friends and family long knew. McNerney didn’t carry cash. There was no money in the wallet, police said.

“He used his bank debit card to pay for everything,” Stanek said.

The defendants would also learn — much later — how investigators tracked them down with the help of McNerney’s stolen iPhone.

It would take 10 months, but police Tuesday arrested and charged Hankins, Simmons and Wells with killing and robbing McNerney.

Difficult case

Bruised, cut and bleeding, DeCicco made it back to his dorm room. “Tim just got jumped,” he told his friends, who were there, according to investigators.

“They tried to call Tim’s cell,” Stanek said. No one answered.

They went to look for McNerney. When they couldn’t find him, they alerted campus police. But even the police search was to no avail.

DeCicco and his friends broke up into groups and continued their hunt.

“They went looking in the library and at other buddies’ places,” Stanek said, “any place they thought he might have gone.”

It wouldn’t be until shortly before 4 a.m. that they found McNerney, in the parking lot of an auto repair shop — right where he had been knocked out from that single punch.

“He was on his back, face up,” Stanek said. There was little blood around him. He was alive, barely, but unresponsive.

McNerney was rushed to Washington Hospital, where he died less than an hour later. An autopsy determined he died of head trauma. His death was ruled a homicide.

The police investigation kicked in. The crime scene, however, would yield few forensic clues.

Days turned into weeks. Weeks morphed into months. Still no arrests.

“These kinds of cases are difficult,” Stanek conceded. “They aren’t going to get solved by science. This is not CSI.”

Persistence pays off

Investigators turned to informants. They reached out to the media in hopes of generating a tip, a clue — something.

“Names were coming in constantly,” Stanek said. “We’d investigate those but they’d turned up to be dead ends.”

Police teamed up with the Crimestoppers program. “But that fizzled out, too,” he said.

During their investigation, police conducted numerous interviews and administered polygraphs on several potential suspects. Still, the case languished. No arrests.

The Washington force sought help from neighboring departments and other agencies, seeking counsel, information and resources that could possibly aid their probe.

Stanek regularly briefed McNerney’s parents of any developments — or lack thereof.

“We tried to keep them up to date and reassure them we were progressing,” he said. “It was hard for them but I never got frustrated. I always knew we’d solve this.”

From the onset, police monitored any activity on McNerney’s debit card.

“We didn’t find much of anything,” Stanek acknowledged.

Much more important, police said, was the global positioning system device in McNerney’s missing cell phone.

“GPS tracking of McNerney’s phone indicated the phone was near Hankins’ home (in Washington) as well as near (McDonald, Washington County) Wells’ known address at the time of the incident,” according to court documents.

Police declined to divulge other evidence painstakingly collected during the investigation that pointed to the three defendants.

Washington County District Attorney Eugene Vittone cited a “break in the case in the past few weeks,” but otherwise he, too, kept tight-lipped.

Instead, he heaped praised on Stanek’s dogged detective work and the help received from outside departments at local, state and federal levels.

“The cooperation of all the law enforcement agencies has been phenomenal,” he said, singling out state police, Penn Hills police, the Fayette County DA’s office and a task force from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Case solved

Vittone gave the go-ahead Tuesday for police to swoop up the suspects.

Wells was arrested at a house in Washington. Simmons was picked up at his home in East Pittsburgh.

Hankins was already in the Washington County Jail, nabbed on an arrest warrant stemming an unrelated drug investigation in neighboring Fayette County.

Police interviewed Hankins and Wells.

Both “stated Troy Simmons was with them at the time of the attack (on) DeCicco and McNerney,” documents said.

Both also allegedly confessed to participating with Simmons in the attack on the two victims.

“Wells admitted to striking McNerney once,” according to a police affidavit, “knocking him to the ground and rendering him unconscious.”

Additionally, Wells told investigators that he took McNerney’s cell phone, documents said.

He also recounted that he burned the clothing that he and Hankins wore that night.

All three suspects were arraigned Tuesday on homicide, robbery, conspiracy to commit aggravated assault and other charges. They are being held in the county jail without bail.

On Tuesday night, Vittone along with police held a news conference to announce the arrests.

But before the public event, Stanek made a private call. He telephoned McNerney’s mother.

“I wanted to alert her before she heard about it on the news,” he said. “Obviously, she was relieved. And grateful.”

McNerney’s father, Dr. Robert McNerney, said this morning his family is relieved that suspects have been picked up.

“I’m very glad that they are arrested and charged. The initial phase of getting justice has gone through,” McNerney said.

Stanek, meanwhile, admitted he remains struck by the cruel twist of fate that led to McNerney’s deadly confrontation with the defendants.

“Two minutes earlier or later,” he said, “they would have missed each other.”