A second person has died from one of two crashes that occurred last month while three drivers were street racing late at night in Eagan, officials said.
Finnian Thomas Cronin, 18, of Edina, died at Regions Hospital in St. Paul on July 1 after suffering severe injuries in one of the crashes about 11:15 p.m. on June 14, the State Patrol said in a court filing this week.
The two vehicles that crashed, a Jeep and a Honda sedan, were heading south on Hwy. 149 and “both ... crossed into the northbound lanes,” a patrol statement read. The SUV hit a light pole, while the sedan landed in a ditch, a patrol statement read.
The driver who hit the pole died soon after the crash and was identified by the patrol as Reed Robert Schultz, 19, of Savage. Cronin was a passenger in the SUV.
Jordan John Wieland, 20, of White Bear Lake, was driving the Honda that went into the ditch. The patrol said Wieland was hospitalized with noncritical injuries. The patrol said it suspects he was under the influence of alcohol at the time.
In a search warrant affidavit filed June 18 in law enforcement’s pursuit of permission to collect Wieland’s medical records, the patrol said:
Traffic videos and witness accounts revealed that three drivers were traveling at “speeds over 100 mph in the 45 zone, when the Jeep and the Honda lose control and go over the median into the [northbound] lanes. The Jeep strikes the semaphore pole and gets cut in half. The Honda [ends up] in the ditch.”
The filing said the third vehicle, a Dodge Durango, stopped without crashing.
