DELANO TOWNSHIP, Pennsylvania — A Hazleton man accused of triggering a fatal Interstate 81 crash at a recorded 114 miles per hour is now in Schuylkill County Prison. Rafael Ceballos, 28, was arraigned on Thursday, November 5, before Magisterial District Judge James Reiley on charges of homicide by vehicle, aggravated assault by vehicle and involuntary manslaughter, and was committed to the county prison after he was unable to post 10 percent of his $100,000 bail, the Coal Region Canary reported. The charges arise from the November 14, 2025 crash on southbound I-81 that killed Danyel Miller, 25, of Shenandoah.
Pennsylvania State Police filed the charges on Monday, November 2, and obtained a warrant for Ceballos's arrest, closing a reconstruction investigation that ran for nearly a year after the crash. According to the affidavit of probable cause filed by Trooper Gregory Monaghan of the State Police barracks at Frackville, investigators built the case from witness statements, cellphone footage, dashboard-camera recordings and the electronic crash data recovered from the vehicles involved. Ceballos is presumed innocent of all charges unless and until they are proven in court; every account of the crash sequence in this report is the police account set out in that affidavit, and it has not yet been tested at a hearing.
What police say happened on I-81 that evening
The crash happened shortly before 6 p.m. on Friday, November 14, 2025, on the southbound side of Interstate 81 near mile marker 135.5 in Delano Township, in the coal-region stretch of Schuylkill County between Hazleton and Frackville. Three vehicles were involved: a 2024 Honda Civic driven by Ceballos, a 2016 Audi Q5 driven by Miller, and an International tractor-trailer operated by Charvel Prophete of Columbus, Ohio. Police say the Honda was pacing the Audi at high speed before Ceballos moved onto the right shoulder to pass slower traffic.
When the Honda cut back onto the highway from the shoulder, police say, it struck the tractor-trailer and then collided with the Audi. The Audi rolled into the median, and Miller was thrown from the vehicle. He was pronounced dead at the scene by the Schuylkill County Coroner's Office. An autopsy performed at the Dauphin County Coroner and Forensic Center ruled his death a homicide caused by multiple traumatic injuries. The crash data, investigators say, showed the Honda travelling at about 114 mph with the accelerator fully pressed at the moment of the first impact. According to the police account, Ceballos told a trooper at the scene that the Audi had not been letting him pass — a remark investigators recorded, though why the two cars were travelling together at speed is a question the court process, not the affidavit, will have to answer.
The charges, in full
Ceballos faces two third-degree felony counts — homicide by vehicle and aggravated assault by vehicle — and a misdemeanour count of involuntary manslaughter. Alongside them are eight summary traffic offences: reckless driving, careless driving resulting in an unintentional death, driving at an unsafe speed, following too closely, two counts of failing to drive within a single lane, and two counts of unsafe passing on the right. The shoulder pass is the heart of the case: passing on the right by leaving the paved lanes is unlawful in Pennsylvania except in narrow circumstances, and prosecutors will argue the manoeuvre, at the speed the data recorder captured, is what turned a highway drive into a homicide charge.
Fatal-crash prosecutions on the interstate rarely move at the speed of the crash itself. Before filing, troopers had to reconstruct the sequence from the vehicles' own electronic data, dashcam and cellphone video and witness accounts, and a coroner's autopsy had to fix the legal cause of death. Charges were filed on November 2, 2026 — eleven and a half months after the November 14, 2025 crash — and the arraignment followed three days later. The delay is the investigation, documented piece by piece in the affidavit, rather than a late discovery of the case.
A freight corridor where speed leaves no margin
Interstate 81 through Schuylkill County is one of the eastern seaboard's working freight arteries, carrying heavy tractor-trailer traffic between the Harrisburg area, the Lehigh Valley and the New York state line, past the coal-region towns of Frackville, Shenandoah and Hazleton. For the Punjabi truck drivers who run this corridor — and I-81 is a regular route between the Northeast and the Midwest and South — the details in the affidavit are the nightmare version of a familiar scene: a car using the shoulder as a passing lane at nearly twice the flow of traffic, with a tractor-trailer in the middle of the sequence. The truck driver in this crash, Prophete, is not charged in the reports reviewed; the police account places the initiating conduct entirely with the Honda.
What happens next
Ceballos's preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 25 before Magisterial District Judge Edward Tarantelli in Frackville — the same court where the charges were filed on Monday. At that hearing, the prosecution must show enough evidence for the case to be held for the Schuylkill County Court of Common Pleas; Ceballos's defence will get its first chance to challenge the affidavit's account, including the crash-data reading and the pacing allegation. Unless he posts bail, Ceballos remains in Schuylkill County Prison while the case moves. Awaaz Punjab will report the outcome of the November 25 hearing.
What is solid
- Rafael Ceballos, 28, of Hazleton was arraigned on November 5, 2026 before Judge James Reiley and jailed in Schuylkill County Prison on $100,000 bail, unable to post 10 percent (Coal Region Canary, Nov 5).
- State Police filed homicide-by-vehicle, aggravated-assault-by-vehicle and involuntary-manslaughter charges, plus eight summary traffic offences, on November 2, 2026, over the November 14, 2025 I-81 crash at mile marker 135.5 in Delano Township that killed Danyel Miller, 25, of Shenandoah (Coal Region Canary, Nov 2; PSP Frackville announcement).
- A preliminary hearing is scheduled for November 25, 2026 before Judge Edward Tarantelli in Frackville.
What is only claimed
- The crash sequence — the Honda pacing the Audi, the shoulder pass at about 114 mph and the order of impacts — is the Pennsylvania State Police account in Trooper Monaghan's affidavit; it is alleged, not yet tested in court, and Ceballos is presumed innocent.
- Ceballos's reported remark at the scene that the Audi was not letting him pass comes from the police account; what it means, and whether the two drivers were racing, competing or strangers, has not been established.