The motorist who hit an Amish buggy last week in southern Minnesota, fled the scene and left injured children behind has been identified as a 32-year-old woman with a troubling driving history.
Filing: Minnesotan who hit Amish buggy and left injured kids behind has troubling driving record
The woman initially told a sheriff’s deputy that she hit a deer.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
February 21, 2024 at 10:12PM
The collision about 10 p.m. Friday on County Road 1 near Spring Valley injured six of the horse-drawn buggy’s nine occupants, two of them seriously, according to a search warrant affidavit filed Monday by the Fillmore County Sheriff’s Office that asked a judge for permission to collect evidence from the driver’s car and her cellphone.
Brittany Nicole Edgar of Kasson, Minn., was soon pulled over 6 miles south of the crash scene by a sheriff’s deputy who saw a car with severe front-end damage, one headlight out and taillights not illuminated, the filing read.
Edgar told the deputy that she struck a deer while on her way back to Spring Valley, and the deputy allowed her to resume her travels, the affidavit continued.
Deputies later found her car at a home in Spring Valley. Edgar repeated that she hit a deer, “then changed her story and stated that she indeed hit an Amish buggy,” the filing noted.
Messages were left Wednesday with Edgar seeking a response to the court filing’s allegations. Charges have yet to be filed.
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.
Last week’s crash is the second serious collision involving an Amish buggy in Minnesota this month and the third in the state since September.
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.
Sarah Beth Petersen and Samantha Jo Petersen, roommates who live in Kellogg, Minn., stand charged in Fillmore County District Court with eight counts each of criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation.
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. The vehicle’s driver, 17-year-old Hayden Lind of rural Pine City, was not hurt in the crash. Charges against Lind have yet to be filed.
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