Charge: Driver on phone when she hit parked sheriff’s squad on I-90, severely injuring deputy

A driver was talking on her phone when she slammed into the back of a parked Sheriff’s Office vehicle in southwestern Minnesota and critically injured a deputy behind the wheel, according to a criminal complaint.

Theresa Ann Baer, 63, of Sioux Falls was charged in Nobles County District Court with criminal vehicular operation in connection with the wreck involving the two SUVs on April 13 on westbound Interstate 90 in Dewald Township.

Baer was charged by summons and is due in court on Monday. Court records do not list an attorney for her. Messages were left Thursday for Baer seeking a response to the allegations.

Nobles County deputy Arnold Logan Waldner, 30, of nearby Worthington was hospitalized after he suffered severe brain damage and other serious injuries. He was parked there, with emergency lights illuminated, while assigned to conduct traffic control as the patrol used a drone to investigate a fatal crash on that stretch of the interstate two days earlier.

Waldner suffered a severe brain injury and multiple strokes.

According to the complaint:

A state trooper was alerted to the crash about 4:35 p.m. and saw the deputy’s squad with heavy rear-end damage and the SUV with damage to its front. Ambulance personnel took Waldner out of his vehicle to a Sioux Falls hospital.

While being treated for her injuries at a nearby hospital, Baer told a trooper she tried to change lanes but “clipped” the deputy’s vehicle, the complaint quoted her as saying.

Baer denied being on her cellphone at the time, however, data collected from her phone by investigators indicated she “had been on an active phone call at the time of the crash,” the complaint continued.

A woman who was on the phone with Baer told a trooper that the two of them were talking when “she heard a loud noise and then heard moaning in the background,” the complaint noted.

The patrol’s examination of data from Baer’s SUV revealed she was traveling at 83 mph before slowing down about one second before impact. The SUV’s speed when it hit the deputy’s vehicle was somewhere between 59 and 72 mph, the analysis revealed.

In crash two days earlier, a semi being driven by 30-year-old Brody William Alderson of Lake Benton, Minn., struck a pickup truck from behind shortly before 11 p.m., according to the patrol.

Alderson told the patrol that “he saw the lights from the pickup in the distance,” a court document disclosed. “When he saw the lights, he began to check his gauges in the semi and [checked] mirrors to see if anyone was behind him. Alderson stated he came up on the pickup a lot faster than he thought.”