Driver faces 11 charges of vehicular homicide
Accident killed 3 Girl Scouts in Lake Hallie
Eleven charges were filed Tuesday against a 21-year-old man accused of inhaling chemical vapors before he crashed his truck into a group of Girl Scouts, killing three girls and one adult female.
The charges filed against Colten Treu include four counts of vehicular homicide and four counts of a hit-andrun resulting in death. The punishment for those charges is up to 160 years in prison.
The crash killed 9year-old Jayna Kelley and 10-year-old Autumn Helgeson, both of Lake Hallie, and 10-year-old Haylee Hickle and her mother, 32-year-old Sara Schneider, from the Town of Lafayette. They were part of a Girl Scout troop that was picking up trash along the highway.
According to the criminal complaint, Treu and his passenger struggled for control of the steering wheel shortly before the truck veered off the road and struck the Scouts, who were picking up trash in the ditches along the highway in Lake Hallie, a town in Chippewa County about 95 miles east of Minneapolis.
Treu and the passenger told investigators that they’d been huffing from a computer keyboard cleaner they purchased that day, the complaint said.
The passenger told police he had grabbed the wheel because Treu “looked out of it” and the truck was crossing over the centerline. He said Treu then yelled at him for touching the wheel before crossing over the centerline again and going into the ditch, according to the complaint.
Treu told investigators he never passed out behind the wheel, but lost control and fishtailed after the passenger grabbed the steering wheel, the complaint said.
Other charges Treu faces are for felony bail jumping, intentionally abusing a hazardous substance and causing great bodily harm because another 10year-old Girl Scout was injured. She is in stable condition in a hospital.
Charges have not been filed against the passenger. Treu is being held on a $250,000 bond.
Treu was previously convicted of drunken driving in Wisconsin and was out on bail for another crash in September in which he was charged with driving his employer’s car into a ditch while intoxicated.
The Chippewa Community Foundation, an economic development corporation, has created a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the medical care of the 10-year-old girl who is in the hospital and the funerals of Kelley, Helgeson, Hickle and Schneider. It is called Chippewa Falls Girl Scout #3055 and had already raised nearly $39,000 as of Tuesday night.
A joint funeral for Hickle and Schneider is set for 11 a.m. Thursday at Chippewa Valley Bible Church, 513 E. South Ave. Visitation will be from 3 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Helgeson funeral will be at 6 p.m. Thursday at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, 1300 Mansfield St. in Chippewa Falls.
Kelley ‘s funeral will be at 11 a.m. Friday at the Chippewa Valley Bible Church. A visitation will be held from 3 to 8 p.m. Wednesday.