ST. PAUL -- The traffic death of a southern Minnesota 5-month-old has resulted in an effort to increase penalties if a driver at fault was convicted of a driving offense within the previous 10 years.
The penalty would jump to 15 years, from the current 10, in a criminal vehicular homicide charge involving impairment, such as drunken driving.
The bill sponsored by Rep. Chris Swedzinski, R-Ghent, and Sen. Gary Dahms, R-Redwood Falls, comes after Drake Bigler died in a July 2012 crash when his family’s vehicle was hit in Pope County by a drunken driver whose with a blood alcohol limit four times the legal limit. The driver, Dana Schoen of Starbuck, had two previous drunken driving convictions and was sentenced to four years in prison.
The boy's mother, Heather Bigler, told a House committee: “People make mistakes, but when it happens a second and a third time, it’s a choice.”
