4 people, including 2 kids, killed when semi hits vehicles stopped for construction in Minnesota

Four people in an SUV — a couple and two children — were killed when a semi slammed into a string of vehicles stopped for road construction on a northern Minnesota highway, officials said Thursday.

The crash involving two semis and three SUVs occurred just before 3 p.m. Wednesday west of Duluth on westbound Hwy. 2 near Nelson Road in Arrowhead Township, the State Patrol said. Nine people were in the five vehicles.

The chain-reaction crash southeast of Floodwood began when a semi driver “struck the stopped vehicles at highway speeds” in a construction zone, the patrol said.

The patrol did not say why the trucker failed to stop. Road conditions were dry at the time.

The patrol identified the dead as SUV driver Vincent Louis Dow, 65, and passengers Bonnie Mae Dow, 66, and 9-year-old girls Hope Mae Oakgrove and Charlotte White. All were from Blackduck, Minn.

The semi driver, Gregory Scott Anwiler, 63, of Grand Rapids, Minn., suffered noncritical injuries and was taken by emergency medical responders to a Duluth hospital, according to the patrol.

A passenger in a second SUV, Sharon Kay Burt, 84, of Grand Rapids, and Aldo Escobar Hidalgo, 45, of Rochester, the driver of the other semi, were injured, the patrol said. Three people were not hurt.

This is the second fatal crash involving Anwiler in recent years, according to patrol and state court records.

On Dec. 8, 2020, he was hauling logs on southbound Hwy. 169 north of Hill City when an SUV driver heading the other way sideswiped his truck, the patrol said.

The SUV’s driver, Michael Brandt, 69, of Deerwood, Minn., was declared dead at the scene.

Anwiler was cited by the patrol for hauling nearly 14,000 pounds in excess logs at the time.