Man who killed SW Minnesota bicyclist: 'Don't do what I did'
The man who killed a 33-year-old mother and farmer on a road near Luverne, Minn., last summer is out of jail and warning others of distracted driving's dangers.
Chris Weber, 27, pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide for the crash that killed Andrea Boeve on June 30, 2014. He just finished a six-month jail sentence and will serve three more months next year and three more in 2017.
Weber has also been sentenced to 300 hours of community service and plans to speak about his crime as part of his sentence.
On Monday, he came to St. Paul as part of the Minnesota State Patrol's widening campaign against distracted driving, which has focused on texting and using mobile devices. Weber is telling his story in a 10-minute video produced by the State Patrol and came to St. Paul to show it for the first time.
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Weber said he had been calling his bank to make a loan payment and only looked at his phone for a split second. He said he didn't see the woman riding her bike alongside Rock County Highway 270, pulling her two preschool-aged daughters in a bike trailer.
"I was working. I was an electrician. I was going from one job site to the next. I thought, 'What better time; I've done it before. Why not do it now?' So I picked that phone up and made that call," Weber said.
Weber hit Boeve with the side of his truck, throwing her into the ditch. "Myself, and another gentleman that came upon the scene of the accident, we tried to save her life," he said. "We were unsuccessful."
Beoeve's 4-year-old daughter Claire broke five ribs and punctured a lung, but both girls survived.
State Patrol Chief Matt Langer urged drivers to rethink any activity that takes their eyes off the road. He said he hopes the story of the man who killed Boeve will serve as an example of the potential danger.
"There's a number of things that are common distractions that we see," Langer said.
"Kids, young kids arguing in the back seat is a frequent distraction," he added. "People eating behind the wheel is a frequent distraction. Drinking coffee can sometimes be an incredible distraction. Talking on the phone is a distraction. Texting while driving is a distraction. Entering information into a GPS is a distraction."
On his way to St. Paul, Weber said he happened to see a woman driving "with traffic coming in both directions, not watching the road. Now, every time I see somebody on their phone, it makes me sick. It makes me think, I hope you don't do what I did."