A 15-year-old sophomore at Waseca Junior/Senior High School was killed in a one-car crash Wednesday night in Waseca County.
Alexus Tiegs, a vibrant and well-liked member of her school choir, was the passenger in a Ford Ranger truck that went into a ditch, struck a telephone pole and broke the pole in half around 9:30 p.m. The truck rolled over and Tiegs was thrown from the vehicle and onto the opposite side of the road.
She was pronounced dead at the scene.
The driver, a 16-year-old boy whose name has not been released, was taken to a hospital in Mankato with noncritical injuries.
The rollover occurred at 128th Street near the intersection with 330th Avenue.
A sheriff's deputy who responded to the rollover also was injured at the scene when he inadvertently came into contact with a downed power line. Josh Langr, a 15-year veteran of the Sheriff's Office, was airlifted to HCMC in Minneapolis with third-degree burns on his feet. Langr, a Waseca graduate whose father also worked for the Sheriff's Office, was in stable condition Thursday afternoon, according to Waseca County Sheriff Brad Milbrath.
"It's just a tragic situation for the community all the way around, especially with the loss of a young life," Milbrath said.
Milbrath said alcohol is not suspected to be a factor in the rollover. The driver may have just overcorrected on the road and crashed, he said.
