Seven years is the sentence for a 28-year-old southern Minnesota man with a revoked driver's license who fatally ran over a friend while "doing doughnuts" in a pasture during a drinking party near Austin.

Nathan P. Brooks, of Faribault, was sentenced in Freeborn County District Court last week in connection with the hit-and-run death of 30-year-old Alex D. Tapp, of Austin, in April 2016.

Brooks pleaded guilty in April of this year to criminal vehicular homicide. After hitting Tapp with his spinning SUV during the bonfire party, Brooks fled and surrendered to authorities the next day.

Counting credit for time served since his arrest, Brooks is scheduled to be imprisoned until the end of 2020 before shifting to supervised release until mid-2023. He also was ordered to pay more than $8,300 in restitution to Tapp's survivors.

His license has been revoked since 2009, when the state Department of Public Safety deemed him too dangerous to be driving. He has been convicted of drunken driving three times as an adult and once at age 15.

He has also been caught at least eight times in the past nine years for driving without a license. He was drunk in two of those instances, according to court records.

Nathan Brooks

A drunken-driving conviction in 2014 drew a three-year prison term, but that was stayed by Mower County District Judge Jeffrey Kritzer, who chose to give Brooks 30 days in jail and place him on supervised probation until 2022. But since probation required that he not drink and drive, Brooks was sent to prison in October 2016 for violating the court's terms.

Paul Walsh • 612-673-4482