By Vicky Wedig
Staff Writer
A Whitewater man is scheduled to be arraigned Nov. 27 on three felony charges in connection with an Oct. 13 crash that killed a Whitewater woman and injured a 14-year-old girl.
Craig M. Seefeldt, 50, was charged Oct. 16 in Walworth County Circuit Court with homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle; second-degree reckless homicide; and operating while intoxicated causing injury, second and subsequent offense.
According to the criminal complaint:
The Walworth County Sheriff’s Department responded to two-car crash on Highway 89 near Island Road in the Town of Whitewater on Oct. 13. A deputy saw a red Chevy Malibu parked diagonally facing south in the northbound lane of Highway 89 with severe front-end damage and a gray Ford Freestyle sport utility vehicle resting on its roof in the west side ditch.
The deputy spoke to a 14-year-old girl who was a passenger in the SUV that Melissa J. Patrick, 40, was driving. The girl said they were slowing down to turn into her father’s residence on Highway 89 and a car struck them from behind. The girl, who said her leg was hurting and had cuts on her face, said the SUV flipped over into the ditch.
Emergency medical services personnel reported that Melissa Patrick was pinned under the SUV and requested additional equipment to extract her. EMTs were unable to revive Patrick, and the coroner was called to the scene.
Police spoke to Seefeldt at the scene. He said he did not know what happened – that he was just driving down the road and his airbags went off. When a deputy asked Seefeldt if he hit another car or another car hit him, Seefeldt said another car hit him and it must have been coming from the other direction.
Seefeldt smelled like alcohol, had glossy eyes and kept adjusting his feet as if to control his balance while he spoke to a deputy. Seefeldt said he drank three beers that day and was on his way to a friend’s house. He failed field sobriety tests and registered .2 on a preliminary breath test from “a very weak breath sample,” the deputy reported.
Information from an event data recorder recovered from Seefeldt’s vehicle reflect that at 2.5 seconds before impact, Seefeldt’s car was traveling 91 mph. At a half second before impact, it was going 63 mph.
