A 22-year-old West Farmington man has been indicted on six felony charges after prosecutors say he slammed into an Amish buggy carrying four teenagers at roughly 75 mph, then hid his truck and fled the scene near Parkman Township. Danny R. Yoder now faces one count of failure to stop after an accident, four counts of vehicular assault, and one count of tampering with evidence, according to the Geauga County Prosecutor's Office.
The crash happened on Bundysburg Road in Parkman Township, according to the prosecutor's office. As reported by the Geauga County Maple Leaf, the collision unfolded around 1 a.m. on April 11 when a southbound white 2014 Chevy Silverado went left of center and struck a northbound buggy driven by 18-year-old James Miller. All four occupants of the buggy were local teenagers, and the horse pulling it was fatally injured and euthanized at the scene, the outlet reported.
According to the same account, 18-year-old passenger Hannah Mullet suffered severe injuries that required emergency helicopter transport to Cleveland MetroHealth Medical Center. Passenger Kayoa Mullet was also seriously hurt, while Miller and passenger Amy Hershberger sustained minor to moderate injuries, per the Maple Leaf's reporting. As reported by Cleveland.com, all four buggy riders suffered serious injuries, per the prosecutor's office.
Passenger Rode Away, Then Truck Vanished
An uninjured passenger, Nathan Hostetler, was riding in Yoder's pickup when it struck the buggy and swerved into a ditch, according to the Maple Leaf's reporting. The outlet noted that Yoder freed the truck from the ditch before fleeing the scene. Ohio State Highway Patrol troopers, who investigated the crash, identified Yoder as the suspect within 24 hours, per the same account.
Per the indictment, Yoder failed to stop and remain at the scene of a crash that caused serious physical harm, and he tampered with evidence while the investigation was underway by hiding his vehicle. A warrant was issued for his arrest, and he will be arraigned in Geauga County Common Pleas Court once taken into custody, according to the prosecutor's office.
Four-Month Gap Explained by Reconstruction Report
Geauga County Prosecutor Jim Flaiz said the grand jury returned its indictment on August 18, twelve days after prosecutors received an official crash reconstruction report on August 6 that determined Yoder was driving about 75 mph at the moment of impact, the Maple Leaf reported. That report accounts for the four-month span between the April crash and the felony indictment handed up in Geauga County Common Pleas Court, according to the outlet's coverage. Per the indictment, Yoder recklessly caused serious physical harm to four people while operating a motor vehicle.
Under the Ohio Revised Code, third-degree felony tampering with evidence carries a potential sentence of 9 to 36 months in prison and fines up to $10,000, while fourth-degree felony vehicular assault carries up to 18 months per count, according to Luftman, Heck & Associates. That statutory framework outlines the prison exposure Yoder faces across the six felony counts he now confronts.
A Recurring Danger On Shared Rural Roads
This is not the first fatal or near-fatal buggy collision to strike Parkman Township. In October 2025, a commercial semi-truck struck a buggy from behind on U.S. Route 422, killing 60-year-old Mary A. Byler and severely injuring 62-year-old Lester Byler, the Maple Leaf reported at the time. The recurrence points to a persistent hazard on the rural corridors that cut through the township.
Geauga County is home to roughly 21,000 Amish residents as of 2024, making it the second-largest Amish settlement in Ohio and the fourth-largest in North America, according to data from the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies cited by Amish America. That density of horse-and-buggy travel across the county's rural road network has shaped years of state and local safety efforts.
In August 2022, Ohio enacted House Bill 30, requiring all animal-drawn buggies and non-motorized vehicles on public roads to display a yellow flashing light visible from 1,000 feet at all times, according to Richland Source. The outlet also reported that a statewide Ohio Department of Transportation study recorded 723 buggy crashes across the state between 2009 and 2019, with roughly 65 percent occurring while motor vehicles attempted to pass buggies. Geauga County officials separately secured a $9.6 million federal highway safety grant to build dedicated eight-foot buggy lanes along high-volume state routes in the eastern part of the county, the Maple Leaf reported.
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