The recent snow storm kept Troopers of the Detroit Lakes district busy. The troopers responded to 79 crashes with 14 of them involving injuries and one involving fatal injury. Troopers also responded to 168 vehicles that had gone off the road. In addition, there were three arrests for driving while impaired.
Complicating matters more was the fact that on three separate occasions jack-knifed semi-trucks forced the closing of I-94 for several hours. There were also four other semi-truck rollover crashes that did not block the freeway. Speed on ice/snow covered road surfaces was the predominate factor in most of the crashes and vehicles going off the road. On one occasion the use of cruise control by a motorist resulted in their lost of control and colliding with a parked State Patrol squad car that was assisting a tow truck at the scene of a rollover. The squad appears to be totaled and the trooper, who has been off work since, is expected to return to duty next week. The trooper's K-9 partner was not in the vehicle at the time of the collision. Due to weather conditions the Trooper decided to leave his K-9 partner at home.
