Bail set at $3M for Penn State student charged with vehicular homicide in State College crash
Centre County’s top judge set bail at $3 million Wednesday for a Penn State student charged with vehicular homicide in the death of a fellow student who was killed while jogging near the University Park campus.
Centre County President Judge Jonathan Grine’s ruling gave Ahmed M. Alqubaisi, 20, of the United Arab Emirates, an opportunity to be released from the Centre County Correctional Facility as he awaits a potential trial. Bail had previously been denied.
Grine’s ruling came over the objection of the woman’s family, as well as more than 17,000 people who signed an online petition that asked for bail to not be set.
Alqubaisi cannot be released from the jail until he installs a GPS monitoring device. He cannot leave the county and must surrender his passport and student visa. He is barred from operating a vehicle.
Alqubaisi, who was suspended from Penn State before the crash, has no other ties to the United States. A State College police detective expressed concern during Alqubaisi’s preliminary arraignment earlier this month he may flee the state if bail was set.
His bail is thought to be among the highest set in recent Centre County history. Grine rendered his decision in front of a packed courtroom, one that included about a dozen of Alqubaisi’s supporters.
His family plans to pay for Lovisa Arnesson-Cronhamre’s funeral, defense lawyer Andy Shubin said during the bail hearing.
“Ahmed and his family wanted this — his first public decisions in the legal system — to be one which don’t add to the unimaginable pain that Lovisa’s family and friends are experiencing,” Shubin said. “... Lovisa and her loved ones are in their prayers.”
No new details of the alleged crime were presented Wednesday. Alqubaisi waived his preliminary hearing.
He is accused of speeding when he slammed his 2024 BMW M3 into Arnesson-Cronhamre as she jogged on Sept. 12 along the 200 block of East Park Avenue, State College police wrote in an affidavit of probable cause.
Neither investigators nor Centre County prosecutors have offered an estimate of how fast Alqubaisi was driving on the wet road adjacent to campus, but a detective wrote it was “a higher rate of speed than would be deemed safe in that area.”
Alqubaisi was driving westbound when he lost control of his vehicle, crossed the eastbound lane and hit Arnesson-Cronhamre as she jogged on the sidewalk, police wrote.
Arnesson-Cronhamre, 25, of Sweden, was a doctoral student studying architectural engineering, a university spokesperson wrote in an email. She was an alumna of the University of Glasgow, the university’s student newspaper reported.
She graduated with a degree in astrophysics and was active in the university’s weightlifting club, the newspaper reported.
Her mother spoke for nearly eight minutes by Zoom from Sweden, telling Grine it was “the hardest speech I have ever done.” Her family has been left to cope with “immense loss and sorrow,” she said.
“We are still in shock. There is a before and will always be an after. Everything in my body resists the unacceptable. I speak of Lovisa in the present tense,” Maja Cronhamre said during the bail hearing. “Lovisa will not be coming home for Christmas. She will be coming home in a casket and we still don’t know when.”
Arnesson-Cronhamre had two sisters and one brother. Her partner planned to ask her to marry him in the fall, Cronhamre said.
She described her daughter as determined, intelligent, humble, caring and loving.
“I am grateful that we always told her this while she was still with us,” Cronhamre said. “We used to joke about when she would receive a Nobel Prize in physics; about whether we’d like the fancy food and if I could sneak a sandwich into my handbag. It was no exaggeration. It would have happened.”
Arnesson-Cronhamre’s injuries, police wrote, included a brain bleed, broken neck, shattered right arm and broken foot. She was taken to Mount Nittany Medical Center before being flown by medical helicopter to UPMC Altoona, where she died.
“We are heartbroken over the tragic loss of Lovisa Arnesson-Cronhamre, and we send our deepest condolences to her family and loved ones,” Penn State spokesman Wyatt DuBois wrote.
Alqubaisi is an inexperienced driver, police wrote. He had a learner’s permit and did not have a licensed driver in the vehicle with him, as required.
He is also charged with one misdemeanor count each of involuntary manslaughter and recklessly endangering another person, as well as two summary traffic violations.
“Our Lovisa: Deeply loved, profoundly missed by me, her father, her brother and her two sisters. Her fiance, Matthew, who now has to live a life without Lovisa,” Cronhamre said. “By countless other relatives and friends, all because of a careless man utterly devoid of respect for other’s lives chose to so casually end Lovisa’s.”
