Charges: Woman hit Amish buggy in Fillmore County, left 9 injured family members behind

A 32-year-old woman with a shaky driving record hit an Amish buggy in southern Minnesota and left the scene, while seven children and their parents occupying the horse-drawn carriage suffered injuries of varying degrees, according to charges filed Tuesday.

Brittany N. Edgar of Spring Valley, Minn., was charged in Fillmore County District Court with two counts of criminal vehicular operation, leaving the scene of a crash, careless driving and two counts related to failure to carry proof of insurance stemming from the Feb. 16 collision.

Edgar was charged by summons and is scheduled to appear in court May 20. A message was left with Edgar seeking her response to the allegations. Court records do not list an attorney.

Court records in Minnesota show that Edgar has two convictions for drug offenses, one each for drunken driving, a lane violation, disobeying a traffic control device and speeding, along with two for careless driving.

The father told the Sheriff’s Office that the family’s 12-year-old suffered a concussion, their 3-year-old had a broken arm, and their 1-year-old sustained a skull fracture and a swollen left eye. He said he, his wife and the four other children had minor injuries.

The crash was the second serious collision involving an Amish buggy in Minnesota in February and the third in the state since September.

According to the criminal complaint against Edgar, a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched shortly after 10 p.m. to County Road 1 near Spring Valley and saw an SUV parked on one shoulder and the buggy in a ditch.

About 10 minutes later, a fellow deputy saw a car with heavy front-end damage, no rear lights and one headlight out heading south on County Road 1. The deputy pulled over the car with Edgar behind the wheel. She told the deputy she hit a deer a couple of hours earlier. The deputy, having learned of the SUV at the crash scene, let Edgar go with a warning.

But back at the scene, one witness told law enforcement a car collided with the buggy, then drove off.

The father of the children told a deputy that he saw two vehicles coming up from behind, so he edged the buggy over to the shoulder, but said it was hit by the second vehicle.

Shortly after 10:50 p.m., a sheriff’s sergeant found the car at Edgar’s home. She repeated that she hit a deer, but eventually conceded that she struck the buggy, the complaint said.

On Sept. 25, also on County Road 1 near Spring Valley, 35-year-old twins allegedly swapped identities in a plot to conceal from law enforcement who was driving an SUV that hit an Amish buggy. Two of the four children inside were killed, and the women are facing homicide charges. On Feb. 1, an Amish couple and their four small children in a horse-drawn buggy were injured in a collision with a teenage driver southeast of Hinckley, Minn., the Pine County Sheriff’s Office said. Charges have yet to be filed in that case.