Minnesota teen drunk, showing off in pickup when he killed fellow high school grad, charges say

A teenager was drunk and showing off his pickup truck when he crashed in western Minnesota and killed his passenger, according to charges filed Thursday.

The single-vehicle wreck occurred about 10:45 p.m. Tuesday about 5 miles north of Wadena near the rural intersection of 370th Street and 640th Avenue, the Otter Tail County Sheriff’s Office said.

The passenger, 18-year-old Blake Unger of Bluffton, died at the scene, the Sheriff’s Office said.

The driver, 18-year-old Izak Schermerhorn of New York Mills, was arrested and charged in district court with two counts of criminal vehicular homicide related to being drunk and a third alleging gross negligence.

Soon after the crash, a sheriff’s deputy administered a preliminary breath test that measured his blood alcohol content at 0.103%, the criminal complaint read. Drivers under 21 years old are not allowed to have any alcohol in their system. That level is also above the legal limit for drivers 21 and older in Minnesota.

Schermerhorn appeared in court and remains jailed as of early Thursday afternoon in lieu of $1,000 bail. He’s due back in court on June 10. Court records do not list an attorney for him.

Both teenagers attended New York Mills High School and graduated on Friday. Unger played football, baseball and wrestled for his school. He was crowned homecoming king last fall.

“It is with a great deal of sadness that I share this message with you ... that a member of our school community has passed away in a motor vehicle accident,” District Superintendent Adam Johnson said in a statement to families posted on social media Wednesday, the last day of high school classes. “This is a devastating time for our entire community.”

According to the criminal complaint:

A deputy dispatched to the crash scene saw deep ruts in the road where “it appeared the driver had been aggressively fishtailing back and forth along the gravel road before rolling,” the complaint read. Unger was left pinned beneath the pickup.

Schermerhorn told the deputy that his life was over just for a couple of drinks. He said he drank three or four Mike’s Hard Lemonades.

Schermerhorn said he went to Unger’s house and picked up his friend, intending to drive around and bring him back home.

“He said he wanted to show off the sound of his exhaust because he modified his catalytic converter,” the complaint continued. “He intentionally had been sliding around the road before the crash and was not able to control the vehicle when it went into the ditch.”

Schermerhorn said he called his mother and attempted to break out of the driver’s side window. He saw that Unger was under the passenger side of the tipped pickup.

He said he had been sober for nearly a year “but decided to celebrate because he was graduating from high school,” the charges noted.