Charges: Trucker was on sex site shortly before causing I-35 pile-up in which woman lost unborn baby

A trucker was messaging on a sex chat site minutes before he caused a high-speed multivehicle crash on a southern Minnesota freeway that resulted in injuries to numerous people, including an SUV passenger losing her pregnancy, according to charges.

Joel Adam Sassmann, 52, of Fredericksburg, Iowa, was charged in Rice County District Court last week with criminal vehicular operation causing the death of an unborn child and eight more counts of criminal vehicular operation alleging gross negligence in connection with the pileup on Aug. 20, 2023, on northbound Interstate 35 just south of Faribault.

Sassmann was charged by summons and is due in court Dec. 18. Court records do not list an attorney for him. Messages were left Tuesday with Sassmann seeking a response to the allegations.

“The defendant ... did not have his full attention dedicated to the act of driving his vehicle,” the complaint read. “There is evidence of [him] accessing websites and sending messages on his cellular phone shortly before the collision. If [he had] been alert to the slowed traffic, then he could have safely slowed his vehicle, and this collision does not occur.”

Kaitlyn Herbert, 31, of Forest Lake, was a passenger in the vehicle that Sassmann struck. Herbert was in the 31st week of a pregnancy, according to the charges. A cesarean section was performed, but the child did not survive, the charges read.

Sassmann came away with no injuries, while eight people in five other vehicles survived injuries of varying degrees. Among the injured were Herbert’s three children, ages 1, 3 and 4.

The Herberts were returning home from a family visit in Iowa, husband Ryan Herbert wrote in an online fundraiser for medical expenses.

According to the criminal complaint:

The crash occurred in a 70 mph zone and shortly before a lane reduction for a construction zone that drivers were warned about by numerous signs spaced out over a nearly 10-mile span.

Despite the signs and slowed traffic in clear view, Sassmann’s nearly 14-ton truck hit the SUV with the Herberts as passengers and Holly Marie Pickering, 52, of Chaska, behind the wheel.

The impact triggered a chain reaction that added four more passenger vehicles to the toll.

Sassmann told a state trooper at the scene that “everything just stopped, and I ran into the back of that car,” the charges said.

His cellphone was located, and a photo of a semi-nude woman was on the screen. Sassmann said he was looking at the picture but not at the moment of the crash.

One driver who had slowed for the construction zone said he saw in his rearview mirror that the semitrailer truck was nearing at a high speed, and he knew it was not going to stop in time. Two other people about five vehicle lengths behind the semi reported not seeing the semi’s brake lights illuminate before impact.

A State Patrol investigation and the truck’s forward-facing video concluded that Sassmann was traveling nearly 70 mph when he hit the SUV shortly before 12:20 p.m.

In the minutes leading up to the crash, according to the patrol’s analysis of Sassmann’s phone, he sent eight sex chat messages, made searches on the Adult Friend Finder Network, visited a live sex chat site, messaged a woman on Instagram and received a Snapchat message. The final message was sent two minutes before impact.