A Minnesota truck driver was allegedly on a sex site just before rear-ending several vehicles, including an SUV carrying a pregnant mother and three young children. The mother’s unborn child died as a result of the crash.
Joel Adam Sassmann, 52, has been charged with felony vehicular operation resulting in the death of an unborn child in connection with the August 2023 collision in Rice County, Minnesota.
According to a probable cause statement obtained by PEOPLE, Sassmann’s truck rear-ended a Chevrolet Suburban, which pushed into a Ford Escape, which then struck a Honda Accord, which was thrown into a ditch, and the Escape into a Volvo SUV, which then hit another Escape.
A 31-week-pregnant lady sat in the Suburban’s front passenger seat, with three little children in the backseat. According to the probable cause statement, the mother, identified as Kaitlyn Herbert in a Minnesota State Police incident report, was sent to the hospital for an emergency C-section. Authorities said the unborn infant died as a result of physical force injuries.
Authorities accused Sassmann of perusing a sex site and sending online messages before the crash.
“The defendant also did not have his full attention dedicated to driving his vehicle,” officials wrote in the probable cause statement. “There is evidence that the defendant accessed websites and sent text messages on his cell phone just before the crash. If the defendant had been observant of the halted traffic, he could have safely slowed his car and avoided the incident.”
According to the probable cause statement, investigators discovered that, before the collision, Sassmann sent eight sex conversations, conducted many searches on a sex website, sent a message to a woman on Instagram, and changed the orientation of his phone to landscape five times.
Sassmann is set to appear in court in December and has yet to enter a plea.
Prosecutors claim Herbert’s three children, ages one, three, and four, were all hospitalized following the incident, as was the driver of the vehicle.
According to a GoFundMe page, Herbert’s 4-year-old son sustained scratches and bruises, while her 1-year-old son received head staples. Her three-year-old daughter broke her leg in the crash. The GoFundMe campaign has raised nearly $70,000.