Two die in separate traffic crashes on Minnesota roads

Two people were killed in separate traffic crashes on Minnesota roads Tuesday, the State Patrol said.

Just after 10 p.m. in Beltrami County in northern Minnesota, a 24-year-old woman who was not wearing a seat belt was thrown to her death when she crashed on Hwy. 89 in Eckles Township.

Traci Cloud, of Cass Lake, Minn., was driving at a high rate of speed near Lumberjack Road when her 2004 Chevy Impala left the highway and rolled over. She was taken to Sanford Medical Center in Bemidji, where she was pronounced dead, the patrol said.

Earlier in the day, a 61-year-old man from Kenyon, Minn., was killed in a two-vehicle crash in Richland Township in Rice County. The man, identified by the patrol as William Matthew Blose, was driving westbound on Hwy. 60 near Jenkins Avenue and crossed the centerline for "an unknown reason" and into the path of an eastbound semitrailer truck about 10:15 a.m., the patrol said.

Blose was wearing a seat belt. The truck driver, Allen Robert Patrin, 42, of Zumbrota, Minn., was not hurt.

On Monday, a 27-year-old man from Westbrook, Minn., died in a single-vehicle wreck. Daniel Henry McClellan was heading south on Hwy. 59 just north of Worthington about 6:18 p.m. when he drifted onto the right shoulder. He overcorrected, crossed into the northbound lane at milepost 17 in Elk Township and went into the ditch where he hit a utility pole, the patrol said.

A 3-year-old girl in the car, identified as Bailey Kimber McClellan, was injured and taken to a hospital in Worthington, the patrol said.

Tim Harlow • 612-673-7768