Charges: Driver, passenger fought for control of steering wheel before truck hit Scouts
Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.— The driver and passenger of a Wisconsin pickup truck fought for control of the vehicle seconds before it veered into a ditch Saturday morning and struck a group of Girl Scouts and adults cleaning up litter along a rural highway, killing four.
The two men were inhaling Dustoff, a computer keyboard cleaner they “huffed” to get high, and as the truck veered across the centerline they each took the wheel before the crash, according to formal charges filed Tuesday.
Driver Colten R. Treu, 21, faces 11 criminal counts that carry a combined maximum sentence of 281 years and nine months in prison. He surrendered hours after a Chippewa County Sheriff’s Department deputy followed a trail of fluid from the crash scene to a garage on Joseph Street in Chippewa Falls that belonged to Treu and his roommate and passenger, John Stender Jr.
The charges against Treu include four counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle, five counts of hit and run and intentionally abusing a hazardous substance. Treu also faces one count of felony bail jumping because he was under court orders to stay law abiding after he was released from custody in nearby Rusk County on Oct. 2 over a felony count of methamphetamine possession.
The 11:40 a.m. crash Saturday along County Road P near the Hwy. 29 overpass in Lake Hallie, roughly 95 miles east of Minneapolis, killed Jayna S. Kelley, 9, and Autumn A. Helgeson, 10, both of Lake Hallie, Wis; and Haylee J. Hickle, 10, and her mother, Sara Jo Schneider, 32, both from Lafayette, Wis.
A 10-year-old girl, Madalyn Zwiefelhofer, remains hospitalized at Mayo Clinic in Rochester after suffering severe injuries including an aortic rupture, injuries to her spleen, kidney and brain, and acute respiratory failure.
Two of the girls and Schneider were killed along the road. Two other girls were taken by ground and air ambulances to a hospital, where one of them died later Saturday.
According to the complaint: Stender told authorities that he and Treu had been huffing while traveling north on County Road P. Treu looked “out of it,” Stender said, so he grabbed the steering wheel when the truck veered across the centerline. Treu yelled at him and steered the truck back across the centerline and then into the ditch, Stender said.