Days after DUI charge, woman gets month in jail for hitting Amish buggy, leaving 9 injured behind

Less than a week after being charged with drunken driving, a woman received a brief jail term for hitting an Amish buggy earlier this year in southern Minnesota and leaving the scene where seven children and their parents were injured in the horse-drawn carriage.

Brittany N. Edgar, 33, of Kasson, Minn., was sentenced in Fillmore County District Court after pleading guilty to criminal vehicular operation and leaving the scene of a crash, in connection with the Feb. 16 collision.

Judge Jeremy Clinefelter’s sentence allows for Edgar to serve her time on work release. He also ordered her to serve three years’ probation and pay more than $20,000 in restitution to her victims.

Before the crash, according to court records in Minnesota, Edgar was convicted twice for drug offenses, and once each for drunken driving, a lane violation, disobeying a traffic control device and speeding, along with twice for careless driving.

Her run-ins with the law did not stop there, according to court records. Just six days before she was sentenced, Edgar was pulled over by a state trooper in Rochester after being spotted driving erratically. She was charged in Olmsted County District Court with drunken driving and fleeing police stemming from when she briefly fled on foot from the trooper, the charges read.

Since the crash, Edgar has also been charged in Olmsted County with domestic assault, stealing checks and shoplifting.

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

According to the criminal complaint:

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. The SUV driver had stopped to help and was not involved in the crash.

About 10 minutes later, another deputy saw a car with a heavily damaged front-end, 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, assuming the SUV at the buggy crash scene was the vehicle involved, let Edgar leave 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.

The crash involving an Amish buggy was the third in the state since September 2023 with serious casualties.

On Sept. 25, 2023, 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, 2024, 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, the Pine County Sheriff’s Office said.