"I killed someone!" a drunken and bloodied pickup truck driver yelled as he crawled in the dark near the twisted wreckage that held a teenager's body, according to charges filed in an east-central Minnesota court.
Colton J. Nelson, 17, a top football and basketball player at East Central High School, was killed in a head-on collision Feb. 9, less than a mile from his family's farm outside Sandstone. The senior was homecoming king this school year and a percussionist in school bands. He was making plans for college.
Hundreds of mourners attended funeral services Monday in the school gym. The family said Colton decided when he got his driver's license at age 16 to be an organ donor.
The pickup truck driver, Charles T. Hendricks, 34, of Sandstone, was charged Friday with criminal-vehicular homicide, drunken driving and violating restrictions on his driving privileges.
"He is beyond hurt," Susan Hendricks, Hendricks' sister, said Tuesday, "He has to live with this the rest of his life, knowing the pain he caused his family and the other family."
She called the wreck a tragic mistake that "Charlie never would have done intentionally." She begged motorists to "never get behind the wheel after drinking. … Some of the best people of society make the choice to drive intoxicated, and accidents come in no order."
Nelson was driving home with his 14-year-old sister, Kalyn, and a friend Benjamin Dombroske, 16, who survived their injuries, authorities said.
According to the criminal complaint, Hendricks' northbound pickup crossed the centerline and hit Nelson's car head-on. Nelson was dead at the scene, trapped in the wreckage.
