January 03, 2019 09:04 AM

New charges have been filed against the man accused of hitting and killing three Girl Scouts and a mother in a hit-and-run in rural northwestern Wisconsin.

The four were killed in November while they picked up trash along a Chippewa County highway. Vehicular homicide charges were filed against 21-year-old Colten Treu, who authorities say inhaled chemical vapors before he crashed his pickup truck into them.</s>Colten Treu, 21, and his roommate both told authorities there had been a fight for the wheel, but they differ in their accounts of what led to the intervention.

In the moments before Colten Treu's black truck plowed into a group of Girl Scouts along the side of the highway, killing four, there had been a dramatic fight for control of the steering wheel.

Treu and his passenger, John Stender Jr., both admitted to police that Stender grabbed the wheel after they had been inhaling fumes from a keyboard cleaner to get high, but each maintains a different reason for the intervention.

According to Stender, he grabbed the wheel to correct Treu's driving after noticing Treu looked "out of it" and crossed over the center line, according to a criminal complaint obtained by the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Stender said Treu yelled at him, grabbed the wheel, and swerved hard, causing the car to jerk back in the direction of the Girl Scouts.

"Mr Stender stated the next thing he recalled is waking up down the road," the complaint said, according to the Leader-Telegram.

However, Treu claims he didn't pass out and said he had only taken two short huffs from the can of Dustoff both men were using before the crash. He told investigators Stender had been huffing heavily and grabbed the wheel causing Treu to lose control of the vehicle, the complaint said.

After striking into the group of Girl Scouts who had been picking up trash along the rural highway as part of a service project, Treu fled the scene. The car was later found parked in a garage with "significant front-end damage, with weeds observed stuck in the front bumper," the criminal complaint said.

Treu told investigators he saw the group of seven girls and five adults before he crashed into them Saturday around 11:40 a.m., the Leader-Telegram reports.

Jayna S. Kelley, 9; Autumn A. Helgeson, 10; Haylee J. Hickle, 10; and Hickle's mother, Sara Jo Schneider, 32, were all killed in the crash.

A fifth victim, Madalyn Zwiefelhofer, was taken to the hospital with severe injuries. According to the criminal complaint she suffered "traumatic aortic rupture, splenic laceration, pulmonary laceration, hematoma of the left anterior frontal lobe, acute kidney injury and acute hypoxic and hypercarbic respiratory failure."

Treu was formally charged Tuesday with 11 counts, including four counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle, four counts of hit-and-run involving death, one count of hit-and-run causing great bodily harm, and one count of intentionally abusing hazardous materials and bail jumping.

Stender has not been charged, and it's not clear yet whether any charges are expected for his involvement in the crash.

[Photo: Chippewa County Sheriff’s Office]</s>LAKE HALLIE, Wis. — A western Wisconsin community on Sunday was grieving the deaths of three Girl Scouts and an adult who were collecting trash along a rural highway when police say a pickup truck veered off the road and hit them before speeding away.

Authorities have not released the names of the girls or the woman who were struck by the truck on Saturday in Lake Hallie, including the name of a fourth girl who survived but was in critical condition at a hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. The girls were members of Troop 3055 and were fourth-grade students at Halmstad Elementary School in adjoining Chippewa Falls, which is about 90 miles (145 kilometers) east of Minneapolis.

“Our hearts are broken for the girls and families of the Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes,” CEO Sylvia Acevedo of Girl Scouts of the USA said in a statement Sunday. “The Girl Scout Movement everywhere stands with our sister Girl Scouts in Wisconsin to grieve and comfort one another in the wake of this terrible tragedy.”

Lake Hallie police Sgt. Daniel Sokup said the pickup, a black Ford F-150, crossed a lane and veered into a roadside ditch, striking the victims. Other members of the troop were picking up trash from the opposite shoulder.

The 21-year-old driver, Colten Treu of Chippewa Falls, sped off but later surrendered and will be charged with four counts of homicide, Sokup said. It was unclear Sunday if Treu had an attorney who could speak for him. Police misspelled Treu’s first name as “Colton” in initial news releases.

Sokup said it was not immediately known if there were other factors that might have led the driver to leave the road. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported that the crash happened before a hill and there were no blind spots, and Sokup said it was “not an unsafe area.”

But Cecily Spallees, a personal care attendant at a group home near the crash site, told the newspaper that drivers regularly speed on that stretch of road, which quickly changes from a 55-mph to a 35-mph zone.

“I’m always telling one of my residents that he shouldn’t walk this strip at night,” Spallees said. “It’s not safe.”

Troop 3055’s regional council, the Girl Scouts of the Northwestern Great Lakes, expressed its condolences on Facebook and said a vigil will be held Sunday evening at the girls’ school.
Colten Treu faces charges of vehicular homicide and drug related charges after he drove his car into a group of Girl Scouts collecting trash by the road, killing 3 and a mother along a Wisconsin highway (KSTP) Treu claimed his passenger was huffing Dust-Off and caused the accident by grabbing the wheel as he saw the scouts (Oxygen)