A Lancaster County jury convicted 31-year-old Philadelphia commercial truck driver Santos M. Valentin on three counts of homicide by vehicle and three counts of involuntary manslaughter, finding that he was scrolling through his phone in the seconds before his FedEx tractor-trailer slammed into a family's car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in July 2024, killing a father and his two children. Judge Todd Brown, who presided over the three-day trial, separately found Valentin guilty of six summary traffic offenses.
The verdict came on July 10, 2026, after jurors deliberated for about an hour, according to prosecutors cited by NBC10 Philadelphia. The crash killed 43-year-old Donnell Hickson, a former Long Island track star from Baldwin, New York, along with his children, 18-year-old Decir and 11-year-old Kyla, as the family traveled in a 2018 Honda Accord. The victims were identified in earlier reporting by Newsday, which first detailed the family's background.
Prosecutors described the 47,000-pound double-tractor-trailer Valentin was driving as a missile that careened down the highway, per their characterization at trial. The crash happened around 4:25 a.m. near mile marker 268.7 in Penn Township, about three miles east of the Lancaster-Lebanon interchange, when Valentin's FedEx rig rear-ended the Hicksons' vehicle. The impact pushed the Honda into a drainage culvert, and the vehicles came to rest with a second trailer on top of the car in a tree line roughly 60 feet from the Turnpike's eastbound lanes.
Dashcam Footage Told a Damning Story
An official court record review of 48 seconds of inward-facing dashcam footage before the crash showed Valentin looking down at his phone 25 times, compared with just 20 glances up at the road, according to reporting by Newsday. Prosecutors said video evidence showed Valentin appeared to be scrolling through social media and other applications on his phone for five minutes before the collision. Pennsylvania State Police obtained more than eight hours of inward- and outward-facing dashcam footage from Valentin's truck as part of the investigation.
Kyle Linardo, a prosecutor on the case, said Valentin might as well have been driving with his eyes closed, and added that Valentin never had a chance to do anything because he was not paying attention. Valentin testified that he had never seen the Hicksons' vehicle before striking it and told investigators the car had come out of nowhere, according to his initial statement to police. He also said he had been using a navigation app to find a gas station. His attorney argued that Valentin lacked time to safely avoid the collision, while prosecutors pointed to dashcam footage suggesting he may have been texting immediately before impact.
Pennsylvania State Police reported that Valentin estimated his own speed at 70 to 75 mph before the crash and was not wearing a seatbelt, which caused him to bounce around inside the cab as the rig rear-ended the car and crushed it beneath a trailer, according to MotorBiscuit. Valentin turned himself in to state police on February 20, 2025, after being charged with felony homicide by vehicle, and was released on $300,000 bond pending trial, the outlet's earlier report noted. He is now scheduled to be sentenced at a later date.
A New State Law Aimed at Distracted Truckers
The case unfolds against the backdrop of Pennsylvania's Paul Miller's Law, Senate Bill 37, which was enacted in June 2024 and took effect in June 2025. The law bars handheld device use while driving and adds up to five additional years in prison for drivers convicted of homicide by vehicle while distracted, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Separately, federal rules from the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration already prohibit commercial drivers from holding a mobile device or texting while operating a rig, with violations carrying civil fines up to $2,750 for drivers and up to $11,000 for carrier employers.
Federal research commissioned by the agency found that commercial drivers dialing a phone are six times more likely to be involved in a safety-critical event, taking their eyes off the road for an average of 3.8 seconds — enough time to cover more than 300 feet blind at 55 mph. That research underscores why prosecutors leaned so heavily on the seconds-by-seconds dashcam count in building their case against Valentin.
In the aftermath of the crash, community members raised more than $24,000 through a GoFundMe campaign to support the surviving Hickson family members, MotorBiscuit reported. The tragedy adds to a string of fatal Turnpike incidents in the region: Hoodline previously reported on a fatal Hempfield overnight crash and a separate case involving a driver who reportedly nodded off near New Stanton, both part of a troubling pattern of overnight collisions along the highway.
A Broader Pattern on Pennsylvania Roads
PennDOT data for 2023 recorded 1,209 traffic fatalities and more than 110,000 reportable motor vehicle crashes across Pennsylvania roadways, underscoring how common — and how deadly — highway incidents remain statewide. Open questions remain about what sentence Valentin will ultimately face from Judge Brown, whether FedEx Freight will face any corporate liability or safety audit findings tied to the crash, and whether the Hickson family will pursue civil legal action. None of those matters have been resolved as of the verdict.
