Patrol: 1 Dead After Driver Slams Into Stopped Car In Dakota Co.
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – The State Patrol says a 25-year-old man was arrested Sunday morning after alcohol was detected on him following a crash in the south metro where he broadsided a stopped car, killing the driver inside.
The crash happened shortly before 2 a.m. on the intersection of Highway 13 and Nicollet Avenue in Dakota County.
The State Patrol said Neftali Ramirez, of Bloomington, was driving a Volkswagen Jetta east on the highway when he slammed into the driver's side of a Toyota Corolla, which was stopped in the northbound lane of Nicollet Avenue.
The driver of the Corolla, a 34-year-old Erin Randall of Richfield, died at the scene. Ramirez suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The State Patrol said alcohol was detected on Ramirez and he was booked for criminal vehicular homicide at the Dakota County Jail.
Randall, a 2007 Fulbright scholar to Bangladesh, served on the board of directors for the Minnesota Chapter of the Fulbright Association and spoke four languages. She was working as a staff researcher at the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation at the time of her death.
"Erin had all the brains of a scholar, the courage and curiosity of a world traveler and the fun-loving spirit of a perpetual student," colleague Michael Dorsher said in a statement to the press.
The crash remains under investigation.