Fateful crest. Two Amish children were killed on their way to school in a horse-drawn buggy and two others seriously injured The buggy was rear-ended by a car driven by a Spring Valley woman who police say was high on meth and speeding.
Sisters charged with cover-up complicity
PRESTON, Minn. — The twin sister of a woman accused of killing two Amish children in a backroads crash has been charged with lying to protect her sister. Filed against Sarah Beth Petersen, 35, were 16 felony couts. Eight counts were aiding and abetting an offender — her sister Samantha Jo Petersen. Eight were for taking responsibility for criminal acts. The charges can mean 80 years in prison. Samantha Jo was charged two days earlier with vehicular homicide. The crash was in September. The investigation was delayed by contradictory evidence. The contradictions, say investigators, included cover stories from the sisters.
The collision
A silver 2005 Toyota 4Runner a crested a hilltop on Fillmore County Highway 1 east of Racine the morning about 8:25 a.m. on September 25. The vehicle was speeding between 63 mph and 71, according to a police reconstruction of the accident. The zone is 55 mph. The view on the road was clear for 1,450 feet with no obstructions, according to the reconstruction. The Toyota rear-ended the two-wheel horse-drawn buggy. Killed, apparently outright, were Irma Miller, 11, and Wilma Miller, 7. Their siblings, Rose Miller, 13, and Alan Miller, 9, were injured and taken 22 miles to a Rochester hospital. They eventually recovered. The kids were on their way to school.
Pieces of the puzzle
This is what happened next, according to the 18-page criminal complaint and information gleaned from police accident report, from witness recollections, from collaborating interviews, and from other sources:
> Samantha Jo Petersen was driving. She recognized the seriousness of the accident and knew that she was particularly liable because she was high on drugs. Inside her Toyota 4Runner a deputy found burned marijuana butts and “a small tin can commonly used to hold marijuana. A blood draw showed Samantha Jo with the presence of methamphetamine, amphetamine and Delta 9 cannabinoid.
> Samantha Jo called her twin sister at a HyVee grocery in Rochester, where was in duty. The sister, Sarah Beth, left work and drove to the crash scene.
These are voice and text messages from various exchanges:
Samantha Jo in online searches: “What happens if you get in an accident with an Amish buggy and kill two people?”
“If you hit a buggy and kill two people, are you going
> Sarah Beth beat police to the scene. Meanwhile, witnesses who had happened on the crash saw a woman they presumed involved in the crash on a cell phone. Apparently this was Samantha Jo. Then, they said, another woman, apparently Sara Beth, showed up. “She just sort of appeared,” said one of the witnesses. One woman hugged the other woman, who was heard saying that she didn’t see the Amish buggy “until it was too late.” Nobody saw the women in the act of swapping clothes, but Samantha Jo apparently put on Sarah Beth’s red Hy-Vee T-shirt and back smock to appear that she had been at work. The women then waited for police to arrive, preparing for Sarah Beth to take responsibility for the crash.
> Once deputies arrived, the sisters were told to wait in a squad car. Not realizing that the car’s audio recording equipment was picking up their conversation, the sisters discussed how law enforcement could not tell them apart. “There’s no way they would ever know the difference between the two of us so they can’t tell,” Samantha Jo said.
> Samantha Jo also sent a text message to friends: “Made Sarah come and take the fall for it so I wouldn’t go to prison.”
> Another snippet from the squad car recording: “I think that one of the guys is on to me, but I don’t really care. There’s no way they would ever know the difference between the two of us so they can’t tell.”
> Later, still in the squad car bt talking with a deputy, Sarah Beth explicitly claimed to have been the driver. She told a deputy she didn’t feel like she did anything wrong but knew that she “hit someone, killed someone,” and would have to live with that for the rest of her life. She later said she wanted to speak to an attorney.
> While at the scene, Samantha Jo asked to grab an ID under the floor mat from the silver Toyota.
Later communications
> Around 10 a.m. Samantha Jo, who also had a Hy-Vee job, texted her boss to call her. To the co-worker on the other end, Samantha Jo said that she was on meth and that she had killed two Amish children after crashing into their buggy: “I fucked up. I just killed two Amish people.” The co-worker asked Samantha Jo if she had been drinking. Samantha responded: “No, you know that’s not my first choice. I’m high on meth.” Talking later to her boss, Samantha Jo said she had left the scene after Sarah Beth arrived.
> Over the next two days Samantha Jo kept sharing information about the crash. Among messages was that she “hit that Amish buggy and killed two ppl” and “made sarah come there and take the fall for it so i wouldn’t go to prison.”
The sister-sister link
Sarah Beth was indebted to Samantha Jo, who took care of Sarah’s children during time in jail. Samantha Jo’s court record shows dozens of run-ins with police, all misdemeanors involving driving and drugs and one for giving an arresting officer a false name. These demeanors go back to when Samantha Jo was a minor. Shortly after the Amish crash the sisters left Spring Valley and moved two counties away to Kellogg, Minnesota.