A Tennessee truck driver was watching Netflix in the cab of his truck before a fatal crash last year on Interstate 35 in Minnesota, authorities say.
Billy Joe Grimes”I just didn’t have time to stop, I didn’t have time to react, and I couldn’t stop the truck,” while alleging that an abrupt lane change ahead had caused a ripple effect in traffic slowing., 55, faces two counts of criminal vehicular homicide and one count of criminal vehicular operation for the crash, which took place in Rice County on August 25, 2023.
Investigators say Grimes’ semi-truck hit the rear of a Toyota, shoving it into a ditch, before hitting a trailer pulled by a Chevrolet pickup truck, KMSP reported. The two occupants in the Toyota died from their injuries. They were identified as 57-year-old Matthew Hansen and 56-year-old Cimberly Ellen Hansen of Urbandale, Iowa.
Grimes and the pickup driver weren’t injured.
Grimes told a Minnesota State Trooper that he had not been using his phone at the time of the crash and that it was downloading an episode of “Rust Valley Restorers” from Netflix that he planned to watch later.
“I just didn’t have time to stop, I didn’t have time to react, and I couldn’t stop the truck,” Grimes told the trooper, adding that an abrupt lane change ahead, because of construction, had caused traffic to slow.
According to Bring Me The News, traffic cameras and dash cam footage showed that Grimes passed five signs a mile apart warning “of upcoming road construction, to slow down and prepare for traffic to merge.” Two of the signs had flashing lights.
“Despite warnings of slow or stopped traffic, Grimes continued toward the construction zone with his semi’s cruise control set between 66-67 mph,” the attorney’s office said.
But investigators viewed footage from a front-facing camera in Grimes’ truck that captured audio from inside the cab, KMSP said. The episode of “Rust Valley Restorers” was playing at the time.
A charging document said that Grimes had been streaming the episode for 20 minutes at the time of the crash.
Witnesses told detectives they saw no brake lights on Grimes’ truck before the crash, and a state patrol crash specialist found no defects in the truck that would have caused the crash.
Grimes has five years of trucking experience and was driving a 44,721-pound shipment from Fort Collins, Colorado, to Rogers, Minnesota, when the crash took place.
