Authorities have accused a Minnesota trucking driver of watching porn on his phone just before causing a crash that killed a highway worker last year.
Last week, 47 year old truck driver Tate Doom was charged with one count of criminal vehicular homicide and one count of criminal vehicular operation causing bodily harm.
The charges were issued in connection with the death of 59 year old highway worker Vernon Hedquist.
The crash occurred in a construction zone on I-94 in Rogers, Minnesota on October 2, 2018, according to KTSP. Police say that Doom rear ended a pickup truck with an attached trailer traveling east on the interstate, causing the trailer to detach and hit Hedquist.
Hedquist died at the scene. Another worker was also injured by the debris from the crash.
Doom told police that he’d been traveling at 50 m.p.h. prior to the crash, but police say that Minnesota Department of Transportation footage showed that Doom was driving 72 m.p.h. at the time of the crash.
Further, police say that several video files had been deleted from Doom’s phone, 14 of which had been downloaded from the website Pornhub. The videos had been downloaded about half an hour before the crash occurred.
Investigators were also able to tell that Doom had been playing the videos starting at 1:40 p.m. The last of the videos began playing at 2:07 p.m. while the crash happened at 2:09 p.m.
Doom denied using either of his two phones since a work-related stop in Big Lake.