A dump truck driver was sentenced to two years in jail Friday for causing a four-vehicle crash that killed a South St. Paul couple in Rosemount in 2019.
William Craig, 47, and Colette Craig, 48, had set out on a sunny October day to tour the fall colors along the Mississippi River. They were headed west on Minnesota 55 in Rosemount, when Fred Tamu Fonji rear-ended them in his loaded dump truck. The couple was pronounced dead at the scene.
A Dakota County jury in February convicted Fonji, 49, of Roseville, of two counts of criminal vehicular homicide-gross negligence and one count of careless driving. He faced consecutive prison terms of nearly five years on one count and six years on the other.
On Friday, Judge Kathryn Landrum told a full courtroom that she struggled with coming up with a sentence.
“We all have to know and appreciate that not paying attention to the road when we’re driving could have horrific criminal consequences,” she said.
However, Landrum also cited Fonji’s lack of a prior criminal record. She said he has shown remorse. She said he has support from his family and others, including many from the metro-area’s Cameroon community. Some of them filled the courtroom gallery for sentencing.
“I do believe that Mr. Fonji is particularly amenable to probation,” Landrum said. “And I do believe that you are deeply remorseful.”
Landrum then granted a motion from Fonji’s attorney for a downward dispositional departure from state guidelines and stayed two consecutive prison sentences that totaled more than eight years.
The judge sentenced Fonji to two 365-day concurrent jail sentences, and also ordered him to serve 300 hours of community service and pay a $2,000 fine. Following the jail time, he will be on supervised probation for 10 years.
“There are no good outcomes today,” Landrum said. “What we have is the unjustifiable, horrific loss of two innocent people, neither of whom deserved this.”
The crash
The Oct. 17 crash happened shortly after noon on Highway 55 at Doyle Path.
According to the criminal complaint, a semi-trailer truck was stopped on Highway 55, ready to turn left on Doyle Path. Two vehicles were either slowing down or stopped behind it — the Craigs’ 2015 Subaru Legacy and a 2016 Dodge Ram pickup truck. The dump truck first plowed into the pickup truck — pushing it into a ditch — and then into the Craigs’ Subaru. The car ended up wedged in between the dump truck and semi.
A witness told police that Fonji’s dump truck was approaching at about the 55-mph speed limit, but did not see it slow down before the crash.
A crash reconstruction found that Fonji would have been traveling between 55 and 58 mph, or possibly faster at the time of crash.
An employee of a nearby landfill told a state trooper that Fonji was “always on the phone” and that the business has a no-cellphone policy, the complaint states. She said she told him to put his phone away every time she saw him with it in his hand, including three times the day of the crash.
An analysis of Fonji’s two cellphones by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension determined that he received two WhatsApp messages just before the crash — at 12:18:50 p.m. and the second 20 seconds later. The analysis was unable to determine if he had opened or viewed them.
“Ultimately, the primary contributing factor to the crash was the defendant’s failure to slow and/or stop for the traffic ahead of him,” the complaint states. “The reconstruction report was completed before the cellphone had been analyzed but noted that upon review of the data, a secondary factor could be the defendant’s distraction by a cell phone.”
The victims
Lifelong Minnesotans, the Craigs met at church and married in 1996 in Roseville. They left behind two college-age sons, James and Liam.
William was the executive director of operations of True North Consulting Group, working on audio/visual projects. Colette also worked part time for the company in accounting and human resources.
Together, the family was involved in the Civil Air Patrol, a volunteer-run auxiliary of the U.S. Air Force.
“This is a terrible loss to our whole family, especially, of course, to the two boys that were left orphans,” said William’s father, also named William Craig. “But there were 800 people at the funeral, people who knew them from their work in the church and the Civil Air Patrol, their work with college students. It was also a loss for all of them.”
Fonji’s attorney Anthony Bushnell said evidence and testimony at trial did not show his client was speeding or using his phone at the time of the crash. He said Fonji testified that he was “concerned about other vehicles passing him on the shoulder, concerned because the roadway had just come from two lanes down to one.”
“What the evidence in this case demonstrates is that Mr. Fonji made a terribly bad judgement call in terms of his priorities and his responsibilities,” Bushnell said. “He should have been looking at the road ahead of him regularly and frequently.”
When given the chance to speak, Fonji told the judge he wishes he would have died instead of the Craigs.
“The family, I cannot feel the level of their pain,” he said. “The pain that I have in my heart is so heavy, so heavy, but I can only share the pain.”
He asked for forgiveness from the family.
“I am deeply, deeply, deeply sorry,” he said.
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