A 20-year-old man on Tuesday received a term of nearly 3½ years for getting drunk and eating THC gummies before he crashed his pickup truck into a car near Willmar, Minn., and killed the other motorist.
Prison for man who was drunk, high on THC gummies when he killed other driver in crash near Willmar
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Daniel Lohse is expected to serve the first 2¼ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
August 6, 2024 at 6:14PM
Daniel Lohse of Willmar was sentenced in Kandiyohi County District Court after pleading guilty to criminal vehicular homicide in connection with a head-on crash July 24, 2022, along Hwy. 71 about 12 miles north of Willmar.
With credit for time in jail since his arrest, Lohse is expected to serve the first 2¼ years in prison and the balance on supervised release.
Judge Melissa Listug also ordered Lohse to pay nearly $68,000 in restitution to the survivors of Dalia Zuniga, 52, of Willmar, who died while behind the wheel of her badly damaged car.
In a court filing last week, defense attorney Thomas Beito argued for his client to be spared prison and be put on probation for 10 years. Beito pointed to Lohse’s treatment and passing successfully every test of alcohol since he was charged and found to have a blood alcohol content (BAC) of 0.179% at the time of the crash, more than twice the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.
Beito also wrote that while Lohse “accepts complete responsibility for cause the crash,” the other driver’s BAC also was above the legal limit. The attorney acknowledged in an interview Tuesday that he could not say whether Zuniga’s intoxication was a factor in the crash.
Firefighters arrived about 2:20 a.m. and freed Lohse from his mangled pickup truck. He told them “I’m drunk” and “I’m wasted.” A sheriff’s deputy saw a jar of marijuana buds in Lohse’s pickup.
Lohse told state troopers he had been drinking at a house party that night in New London and didn’t know how much alcohol he drank before his southbound pickup hit the car head-on. He added that he ate THC gummies as well.
Lohse was 18 years old at the time of the crash. It’s illegal for anyone under 21 to be driving with any amount of alcohol in their system.
A passenger in Zuniga’s car, 33-year-old Sergio Vicente Valador-Venzor, of Belgrade, Minn., was noncritically injured.
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