A truck driver has been sentenced to prison following a 2018 crash that killed a highway worker in Minnesota.
On July 14, 48 year old truck driver Tate Doom was sentenced to four years and four months in prison after he pled guilty to charges of criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation.
The charges against Doom were issued following a fatal crash that occurred in a construction zone on I-94 in Rogers, Minnesota, on October 2, 2018.
Police say that Doom rear-ended a pickup truck with an attached trailer traveling east on the interstate as the pickup slowed for traffic in the construction zone, causing the trailer to detach and hit 59 year old highway worker Vernon Hedquist.
Hedquist died at the scene. Another worker was injured by the debris from the crash.
Investigators later seized two cell phones from Doom’s semi and discovered that several video files had been deleted from the devices, 14 of which had been downloaded from the website Pornhub.
Investigators were also able to tell that Doom had been playing the videos starting at 1:40 p.m. on October 2, 2018. The last of the videos began playing at 2:07 p.m. while the crash happened at 2:09 p.m., according to police.
Doom denied using either of his two phones since a work-related stop in Big Lake.