Charges: Pickup driver hit bicyclist, left him in Minnesota road to die

A pickup truck driver hit a bicyclist on the shoulder of an east-central Minnesota highway and left him there to die, according to charges.

Eddie Ray Eiffler, 62, of Sandstone, Minn., was charged in Pine County District Court last week with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide, one alleging that he left the scene and the other over gross negligence, in connection with the crash on Feb. 10 that killed 31-year-old Tyler Spooner of Sandstone..

Eiffler was arrested and later released after posting a $50,000 bond ahead of a March 25 court appearance.

Steve Meshbesher, Eiffler’s attorney, said Tuesday, “So far, I haven’t seen any evidence that he was the driver of the vehicle. ... There is a lot of suspicion, but there is not concrete evidence of it. Nobody saw [the crash]. There is no photographic evidence of it, and there’s no admission of it.”

An investigator collected DNA from the pickup’s steering wheel and gear shift in an effort to identify who was driving at the time of the crash. Results of tests on the DNA are pending, the charges said.

Court records in Minnesota show that Eiffler was charged with drunken driving on allegations that he was straying over the center line and the fog line on a Pine County road in November 2023. A preliminary breath test measured his blood alcohol content at 0.207%, more than 2½ times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.

He also was charged with a misdemeanor stemming from his allegedly hitting another vehicle from behind in August and slightly injuring the other driver.

Eiffler has pleaded not guilty in both pending cases.

According to last week’s criminal complaint:

A caller to 911 reported that the driver of a truck with a snowplow hit a bicyclist along County Road 61 and kept going toward Sandstone.

Emergency medical responders took Spooner to a hospital in Sandstone before he was taken by air ambulance to a Duluth hospital, where he died the next day.

A witness told a sheriff’s deputy that he saw the truck hit the bicyclist on the shoulder, and “it looked like [the truck] was going to stop and then took off into town,” the complaint said.

Another witness said “there was plenty of room for the truck to stay on the side of the road ... but almost the whole pickup crossed the fog line” onto the shoulder, the complaint continued.

Still another witness to the crash honked at the pickup driver and pointed at the bicyclist, but the motorist kept going.

Video from a gas station captured the pickup passing by shortly after the crash, leading the Sheriff’s Office to determine it belonged to Eiffler.