Ara got his A model 135 rating on 12th September 2014 and B rating 12th August 2017. What IF time he had in either model i don't know, but with no IF time since completion of training in October 2007 that means he had between seven and ten years between drinks, whatever you had learnt about IF in training would be long forgotten, assuming the 6.8 hours were in the B over the period of 31 months is not going to get you one tenth of the way up to speed.
If he'd done 6.8 hours IF training in a 76 he should have worked out that you should not be hands flying it in IMC, and certainly not hands flying it in SAS mode with the force trim off. For the life of me I can't see how you can get in a UA in a 76 unless you were flying in SAS and totally not paying attention.
Being special VFR winding his way along a freeway at low level my bet he would be in SAS and force trim off, when confronted with IMC he likely lost it maybe searching for the requisite buttons as you describe would be needed
Gulli, muscle memory would have him floundering, and understandably so, use it or lose it.
An insight to the company ethos may be gained in the docket with interview with one of the pilots.
https://data.ntsb.gov/Docket?NTSBNumber=DCA20MA059
Down load
"3 OPERATIONAL FACTORS AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE GROUP INTERVIEW OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPTS" and open the "Deetz" PDF file.