PRESTON, Minn. –A Hastings man was sentenced to 30 days in jail for driving with drugs and two children aboard and hitting a horse-drawn Amish buggy and killing the teen-age buggy driver. Also, Joseph Anthony Perry, 41, was placed on probation for two years. Judge Jeremy Clinefelter issued the sentence. The terms were in a plea deal in which Perry admitted to a misdemeanors of drug possession and driving after his license had been suspended. Dismissed were a felony drug charge and misdemeanor counts of driving with an open bottle, careless driving, and possessing marijuana and drug paraphernalia. The accident was in a rural road in June 2021. Perry told a deputy that the sun was in his eyes and that he asked one of his sons to grab him his sunglasses but the boy couldn’t find them. By then it was too late. The buggy driver, 15-year-old Henry Hershberger, was injured fatally. Deputies said Perry was driving 50 mph and did not brake.
Earlier: Boy in Amish buggy dies in collision
Perry. Was driving home o to Hastings from a resort in Spring Grove.