Victim Blames Truck Driver's Cell Phone Use for Almost Fatal Crash
A Twin Cities mother hopes her near-deadly crash helps make Minnesota roads safer. She says a semi-trailer truck driver distracted by his cell phone caused the crash that left her critically hurt.
"My kids were almost motherless in elementary school. My husband was almost a widow at 33," said Tessa Mettel in an interview last week after a court hearing on her lawsuit.
When you look at the twisted wreckage of the red pickup truck upside-down on the freeway, it's hard to imagine how anyone got out alive.
"I don't know how they got me out of there. I don't know what it must have taken," she added.
The crash was so bad, it took rescue workers two hours to extricate the Forest Lake woman from her Ford F-150.
"I was literally centimeters away from being dead," said Mettel.
Mettel's vehicle was hit by a semi when it was merging onto Interstate 694 in New Brighton.
The driver, Corey Gerdes, was on his way back to Sysco Asian Foods headquarters in St. Paul where he works for the food delivery company.
A traffic camera captured video of Mettel's red pick-up as it went over the guardrail and into the air before finally landing on the underpass below on Interstate 35W.
"I remember getting in my truck, and that's it. That's where it ends for me," said Mettel.
Mettel was rushed to HCMC in critical condition. That's where she spent two weeks being treated for multiple fractures.
"I am one accident, one good fall away from being paralyzed," said Mettel.
Her husband stayed home for three months to care for his wife and their two children.
The 21-year-old truck driver was not hurt in the crash and was back behind the wheel of the semi just days later.
Mettel is also back at work and bracing now for another round of surgery scheduled for next month.
"I learned last week I have to have cervical spinal fusion," said Mettel.
"Thankfully I didn't die, so I have to get through my day," she also said.
She and her husband filed a lawsuit against Sysco and the driver, Corey Gerdes.
Attorney Bob Bennett said, "Do we want the people who we grant Class A licenses to, to be able to use those vehicles while they are habitually using a cell phone?"
In their suit, they include Gerdes' personal cell phone records that show him texting minutes earlier and using his hand-held cell around the time of the collision.
"He is using the phone while it happened," argued the Mettels' attorney in an interview.
In a videotaped deposition, Bennett grilled Gerdes about making a call just before the crash.
Bennett: "What were you calling your Uncle Vern about?"
Gerdes: "To see if he left to go to the Fair or not."
In that same deposition, Gerdes also admitted texting minutes earlier.
Bennett: "You were sending and receiving text messages? Correct? You had three outgoing and one incoming text message. Correct?"
Gerdes: "Correct."
Gerdes had denied using his cell when he was first interviewed by a State Patrol investigator who reconstructed the crash last year.
But the attorney for Sysco and Gerdes insists he was not using his phone at the time of the crash.
That attorney, Mark Solheim, plans to challenge the cell phone records.
Solheim also criticized Mettel's attorney for going to the media with her story.
"We are comforted to know that Ms. Mettel has made a remarkable recovery and has returned to work and raising her family. We continue to pursue settlement of this claim with plaintiff's counsel. However, we are not interested in contributing to the plaintiff's attorney's transparent attempted sensationalism of this case and so our advocacy will remain in the courts," Solheim said in a statement to WCCO-TV regarding the lawsuit.
Regardless of what happens in court, Mettel says she will continue to share her story so people know the dangers of driving a commercial truck with one hand on a cell phone.
She hopes Minnesota will adopt a law requiring hands-free phones if truckers talk on cells while they are behind the wheel.
"Maybe just getting the word out there that this is the result of what happened might make a handful of people stop doing it, which and then saves a handful of lives," Mettel.
The Sysco driver pleaded guilty to failure to yield. Gerdes left his job last August, almost a year after the crash.
Meanwhile, his former employer now bans its drivers from using cell phones behind the wheel.
A Hennepin County judge heard arguments on the lawsuit last week. It is scheduled to go to trial in February.
Distraction.gov: Official U.S. Government Website For Distracted Driving
