Dump truck driver sentenced to jail after killing two in Rosemount

ROSEMOUNT, Minn. (FOX 9) - A man involved in a 2019 fatal crash on Highway 55 in Rosemount has been sentenced for his role in the crash.

Fred Tamu Fonji, 49, of Roseville, was sentenced Friday to two terms of 365 days in jail, to be served consecutively in connection with the fatal crash near Doyle Path on October 17, 2019, that killed 48-year-old Colette Larae Craig and 47-year-old William Louis Craig of South St. Paul.

The crash happened on Oct. 17, 2019, killing two people from South St. Paul. According to the criminal compliant, a witness driving westbound on Highway 55 saw a semi-tuck waiting to turn left onto Doyle Path as a dump truck approached. Fonji, the driver of the dump truck, hit a pickup truck and another car before stopping side-by-side with the semi-truck. 

The crash reconstruction report found that Fonji would have been traveling at least 55 mph when he hit the pickup truck, veering it off the roadway into a ditch. Fonji's dump truck then struck the victims' car, pushing it into the semi-truck and splitting it in half. The report also found that there were no weather or road conditions that contributed to the crash, and the driver should have been able to slow and stop before reaching the traffic ahead of him. Another contributing factor could be the driver's distraction by a phone.

A Minnesota State Patrol Trooper came to the scene around 12:20 p.m. and saw a semi-truck angled across the lanes, a dump truck, and a crushed passenger vehicle that was spilt in half and smashed between the two trucks.

Two days after the crash, an employee of the landfill contacted a state trooper to describe the defendant and report the assigned truck number involved in the crash. The employee shared that Fonji had come through her station three times on the day of the crash and was on his phone every time. She said she told him to stop using his phone each time she saw it in his hand since the landfill has a "no phone" policy, the charges say. 

Authorities seized a Samsung Galaxy and an iPhone from Fonji and submitted them for forensic analysis in October 2019. The Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was unable to extract any data until September 2020 with updated software. The forensic analysis showed two incoming messages on WhatsApp at 12:18 p.m. and 12:19 p.m.

There was no presence of a controlled substance in the driver, according to the criminal compliant.