Calling for wholesale change in societal views on the public health epidemic of distracted driving, a Le Sueur County judge sentenced a New Prague woman to community service, probation and four days in jail in the death a year ago of a 79-year-old school bus driver. 
 
 "You are a gifted teacher, use that gift," Judge Mark Vandelist said to Susan Ann Russo, seated at the defendant's table in a quiet courtroom filled with a couple dozen friends and family members of both the late Joseph Tikalsky and Russo. 
 
 The judge encouraged Russo because he hoped she would become a force for change after the "absolute tragic consequence" of her distracted driving — likely while texting. 
 
 Russo, 48, struck and killed Tikalsky on Oct. 28 as he collected his morning newspaper from a box on the road in front of his home. Tikalsky was wearing a reflective jacket at the time and was on break from his work as a school bus driver, a job he didn't need but continued because he loved being with kids. 
 
 Amid teary statements from Tikalsky's widow, a son and two granddaughters — as well as from Russo herself — about the tragic crash, there was a call for help with distracted driving laws, especially pertaining to electronic devices. 
 
 Tikalsky's youngest son. Greg, told the court he's begun lobbying for tougher laws, but to no avail. "We have to view distracted driving as we view drunk driving," he said, adding that the latter was once more socially accepted than it is now. 
 
 Susan Ann Russo 
 
 While Minnesota law bans text messaging for all drivers, felony convictions for texting drivers who injure or kill others have been uncommon. 
 
 Emma Jean Tikalsky said of her late husband, "I would wish the way he died might be an example to other drivers to forgo electronics and concentrate on driving." 
 
 Tikalsky's family spoke of a grandfather who never missed a sporting event or confirmation and taught the next generation how to make sauerkraut. 
 
 From the defendant's table, Russo listened quietly. When it came her turn to speak, she tearfully read a letter she had written to Tikalsky, starting with, "Dear Joe." She said her heart aches for him and his family every day and that she would trade places with him "in a heartbeat" if she could. 
 
 "I'm struggling to know how to move on," she said. "It is very difficult to comprehend what I did and make sense of it all." 
 
 Russo said the Tikalsky family will forever be in her thoughts, heart and prayers. "I will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake," she said. 
 
 Vandelist then imposed a sentence that had been agreed upon as part of a plea deal. Russo must complete 40 hours of community service with Minnesotans for Safe Driving within the next year, but Vandelist said he hopes she continues beyond the required hours to try to end a growing problem. 
 
 "I would bet that everyone in this courtroom has looked away from the road while driving," Vandelist said. No one shook their head in disagreement. 
 
 The case underscored how difficult prosecuting distracted driving incidents can be. Reading or sending texts while behind the wheel, even when stopped at a light, is illegal in Minnesota. 
 
 Russo told officers at the scene of the crash that she was reading a text before the crash and preparing to send one. But after she entered her plea in August, a forensic investigation found no activity or texts on her phone. 
 
 Based on the forensics results, she attempted Monday to withdraw her plea. Vandelist denied that motion, saying regardless of whether she was texting, she should have seen Tikalsky. 
 
 Russo will spend four days in the county jail divided in two stints coinciding with the anniversary of Tikalsky's death. She serves her first two days beginning Oct. 28 and the next on the same date in 2017. 
 
 Vandelist put Russo on probation for two years, barring her from having active electronic devices in her vehicle or using drugs or alcohol. She also must pay a $3,000 fine that can be used for a billboard warning against distracted driving. 
 
 In a quiet hallway after court ended, Emma Jean Tikalsky and her daughter Mary Jo Dorman approached Russo and hugged her. Tikalsky said it was a moment of forgiveness she had long prayed for. 
 
 Added Dorman, "I wanted her to see that we're moving on, and she should, too." 
 
 Twitter: @rochelleolson ||||| NEW PRAGUE, Minn. (WCCO) — A driver who was texting when she hit and killed a 79-year-old New Prague man will spend four days in jail after a judge ordered her sentence on Monday. 
 
 A Le Sueur County judge sentenced 48-year-old Susan Ann Russo for the accident that happened nearly one year ago on Oct. 28, 2015. 
 
 The victim, Joe Tikalsky, was a school bus driver who was walking out to his mailbox outside of his home when he was hit. 
 
 The Tikalsky family is choosing action over anger. 
 
 Emma Jean Tikalsky, who was married to Joe Tikalsky for 54 years, said Monday was the first time she and her children met with the driver who hit her husband. 
 
 “We cried together and they begged us, my daughter and myself, ‘Would you please find it in your heart to forgive us?'” Emma Jean Tikalsky said. “I knew that was the godlike thing I would be expected to do and we did. We said yes.” 
 
 The Tikalskys hope other drivers will realize it only takes a split second to take a life and change the lives of so many more people. 
 
 “Four days or 400 days, it really doesn’t matter,” Emma Jean Tikalsky said. “I know she didn’t mean to kill anyone.” 
 
 Joe Tikalsky drove a New Prague school bus for almost 50 years. 
 
 He was wearing his reflective jacket from work when he walked out to get the paper and was hit near his mailbox. 
 
 “It’s even more scary knowing that we have this society that is, I’ll say, addicted to their phone,” Joe Tikalsky’s son Greg said. “His kids were his pride and joy and his grandkids were his pride and joy.” 
 
 The family is working with lawmakers to lobby for more strict and defined distracted driving laws and consequences in Minnesota. 
 
 It is illegal right now to read or send texts while driving, even when stopped at a light. 
 
 “We care about people living and something must be done,” Emma Jean Tikalsky said. 
 
 Russo will spend two days in jail on the anniversary of Joe Tikalsky’s death this year and two days next year on the anniversary as part of the agreement. 
 
 Russo will also pay a $3,000 fine that the family wants used to raise awareness against distracted driving. ||||| Brodhead students say safe driving drill went too far https://t.co/zrWQEgdPOo pic.twitter.com/Q1LOXv8s3y — nbc15_madison (@nbc15_madison) October 28, 2016 
 
 Just after the morning Pledge of Allegiance last Wednesday, students at Brodhead High School received a startling announcement. 
 
 Four of their classmates had been killed in a car crash involving texting and driving. 
 
 In Sam Bolen’s algebra class, people began stirring. 
 
 Brodhead is a city in rural Wisconsin, about 100 miles southwest of Milwaukee. With a population of about 3,000, it is the kind of place where everyone knows everybody else. 
 
 “They went into detail about how one of them was rushed to the hospital,” Bolen, a junior, told The Washington Post. “I was pretty upset. It is a really small school, like, most of the people really knew who they were. You kind of know who everybody is in a smaller school.” 
 
 Bolen texted his mother, and many other students did the same with their parents, he said. 
 
 “A lot of our fellow friends and students actually started crying,” Brodhead student Madison Trombley told NBC 15 News, which first reported the incident. 
 
 A high school in Brodhead, Wis., is under fire for announcing the 'deaths' of four students in a crash crash as part of a safe driving initiative. Ten minutes after the announcement was made, students were told their classmates had not in fact been in an accident. (Brodhead High School) 
 
 The person making the announcement waited 10 minutes, then said that the previous message had actually been part of a drill about safe driving techniques. 
 
 There had not been a car crash. 
 
 The four students were not dead after all. 
 
 [My father died because of a distracted driver. We have to do more so it doesn’t happen to others.] 
 
 According to NBC 15, the “deceased” students who participated in the drill were told not to use their phones to reply to classmates. 
 
 Questions about whether the school crossed a line to get its safe-driving message out have divided its students and the community. Bolen and his mother said they have received intense backlash since he gave an interview to NBC 15 last week. 
 
 “There’s been a parent that said, ‘If you have a child who’s offended by this, you are raising a weak, drama-filled child,'” Bolen said this week. “It is kind of uncomfortable when you know that teachers are even talking bad about students who are upset.” 
 
 Brodhead School District Superintendent Leonard Lueck told The Post in an email that the drill was intended to bring awareness to teen driving safety but acknowledged “problems with this activity due to communication issues that occurred.” 
 
 “While we stand by the worthiness of the activity, we recognize the flaws with how it was communicated,” Lueck wrote. “We will evaluate the value of this activity and either make changes to how it is communicated or not do the activity again.” 
 
 Lueck added that the district formally apologized to parents and students “for any undue stress this activity may have caused.” 
 
 [This surprising activity is more dangerous than using your phone while driving] 
 
 On Facebook, a student named Miranda Ryser, who identified herself as a student council member, posted several impassioned messages on Facebook in defense of the drill following the NBC 15 report. 
 
 “To the people who are upset about what happened at school today, good,” Ryser wrote. “I hope you’re upset about it because I would rather have you upset and pissed off at the student council and the principal for a day, instead of being depressed because one of your classmates ACTUALLY died. I get that some people were already affected by other car accidents but it happens. People die on the daily basis and it happens. Touchy subject or not it happens and it shows that it can happen unexpectedly. 
 
 She added: “If we did anything like this in another way, no one would listen or pay attention to ANYTHING. Try warning high school students of the dangers they just don’t care.” 
 
 Nearly 60­ percent of crashes involving teen drivers have some form of distraction in the six seconds leading up to the accident, according to a report by the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety. 
 
 In about 12 percent of the cases studied, the distraction was cellphone use. The percentage of teens in crashes using cellphones has remained about the same since 2007, but researchers found that teen drivers are using them less for talking and listening and more for reasons that require looking at the phone. 
 
 Sarah Bolen, Sam’s mother, said they are not criticizing the student council or the message; on the contrary, she said, Sam is named after his uncle, who was killed by a drunk driver, which made the fake death announcements even more upsetting. 
 
 But she did not approve of the way the school staff members and administrators handled the exercise. 
 
 “It’s almost insulting, in a way,” she said of the school’s approach, which she called a scare tactic. “I don’t feel that you need to go to those kinds of extremes to teach a lesson. It minimizes other people’s feelings who have actually gone through it.” 
 
 What some classmates found bizarre was that the fake death announcements continued through the day. In the second hour, it was the school principal who came on to tell the student body that four other classmates had “died.” 
 
 And then, during the school’s official morning announcements that day — akin to a student-run newscast — two classmates delivered this: 
 
 “These are your morning announcements. Currently today it is the 26th. There have been a series of wrecks and multiple reckless driving things happening currently around Brodhead. We’ve currently lost a handful of fellow students, and we’re going to show you some images of their lives now. We’d like you to give them a moment of silence.” 
 
 For about a minute, photos of several Brodhead students flashed on the screen against a haunting piano and violin tune. 
 
 “Today make sure you take a moment and think about all your loved ones as those were pretty sad moments there,” the student broadcasters said in their sign-off. “As well as drive safe . . . have a good day.” 
 
 [Bringing back driver’s ed could be just the thing to get teens behind the wheel] 
 
 Finally, after a rundown of the day’s cafeteria menu and a volleyball team fundraiser, two adults appeared on screen in the same video to give an “update” about four other students who had been “T-boned by a drunk driver.” 
 
 Somberly, one recited the names of the students who had been “killed.” 
 
 By then, most of the student body knew the announcements were not real, and the “dead” students were still at school, dressed in black. 
 
 “You just kind of became numb to it,” Bolen said. “They just kept doing it. It just didn’t really make sense.” 
 
 At the end of the day, Bolen said, there was an assembly where the school’s principal called out students who were upset. 
 
 “He yelled that ‘if anyone has a problem about it, their parents can call me tomorrow,'” Bolen said. “He was very standoffish about it.” 
 
 Reached by phone Monday, Brodhead High School Principal Jim Matthys cut short inquiries about the announcements. 
 
 “I don’t have any comment for you, I’m sorry,” Matthys said before hanging up. 
 
 Sarah Bolen said that attitude was part of the reason she has not tried to contact the school or district. Given the comments she has read since the incident was first reported, she fears that even more vitriol will be directed at those who disagreed with the drill — but she said she thought it was important to speak out. 
 
 “I want to note that there’s better ways to go about teaching our children, and that’s not through fear,” she said. “It’s not fear-based. It’s with compassion, and having compassion is not weakness. It’s actually the opposite.” 
 
 Read more: 
 
 This school staged a ‘Color Wars’ pep rally. Then students showed up in ‘White Pride’ shirts. 
 
 Autistic black teen got lost running a 5K — and was assaulted by a man who feared getting mugged 
 
 This student won $10,000 with a half-court shot. She’s using the money to thank her grandma. 
 
 A teenager was walking for hours to and from work — until a police stop changed his life
– A Minnesota woman who struck and killed a man while allegedly texting and driving will spend just four days in jail over two years. As part of a plea deal, Le Sueur County Judge Mark Vandelist on Monday sentenced Susan Ann Russo to four days behind bars, 40 hours of community service with Minnesotans for Safe Driving, and two years of probation for reckless driving, reports the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Russo, 48—who killed school bus driver Joseph Tikalsky, 79, as he was getting his morning paper on the road outside his home on Oct. 28, 2015—must also pay a $3,000 fine to be used to erect a billboard warning about distracted driving. She'll spend two days in jail beginning on the anniversary of Tikalsky's death, and again on the same date in 2017. Russo initially told officers she was reading a text and about to respond before the crash and pleaded guilty to reckless driving and misuse of a wireless communication device before an investigation found no activity on her phone at the time. Vandelist then threw out the misuse of a wireless device charge, per Le Center Leader. However, he said Russo should have seen Tikalsky—who was wearing a reflective jacket—regardless. "You are a gifted teacher, use that gift," Vandelist told Russo on Monday, advising her to educate others on the dangers of distracted driving. Russo said she "will spend my entire life trying to make up for my mistake." "Four days or 400 days, it really doesn't matter," adds Tikalsky's widow, per CBS Minnesota. "I know she didn't mean to kill anyone." (Texting is the worst kind of distraction.)