STILLWATER, Minn. - A Washington County man avoided trial by pleading guilty Thursday for his role in a car crash that claimed the life of a Minnesota National Guardsman.
Anthony Mancheski pleaded guilty to one felony criminal vehicular homicide in the death of Brian Jacobson.
State Troopers say the 20-year-old Mancheski was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic on Highway 61 near the Hastings Bridge, when he caused the chain-reaction crash that killed Jacobson in May of 2010.
Originally, Mancheski was given a careless driving misdemeanor citation, but the Jacobsons urged the county attorney's office to up to the charges.
Since drugs or alcohol did not play a role in this case, pushing it to a serious felony offense requiring a prison sentence was a difficult thing for prosecutors to do.
"Here, it's grossly negligent. In other words, without scant care is the way the law reads and the difficulty here is jurors typically struggle with those concepts," Washington County Attorney Pete Orput explained to KARE 11 recently.
Since the May 2010 crash, Mancheski has been pulled over twice for driving more than 20 miles over the posted speed limit. He has also been booked on suspicion of drunken driving and underage drinking.
Mancheski will be sentenced for his role in Jacobson's death Feb. 24.
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