A Third District judge has ordered a dump truck driver to stand trial on two counts of manslaughter in connection with a 2022 crash in Big Cottonwood Canyon that killed a pregnant woman, while dismissing identical charges against the truck's owner for lack of probable cause. Jonathan Ryan Sargent, 37, will face trial over the Aug. 15, 2022, collision that killed Jessica Keetch Minnesota, who was 36 and 12 weeks pregnant at the time. Truck owner Dalton Nathan Wheeler, 32, will not face trial after Judge Patricia Kuendig found insufficient evidence to support manslaughter charges against him.
Kuendig's ruling, issued on Sept. 29, followed months of hearings in the case, according to KSL. The judge wrote that there was not probable cause to support the manslaughter charge against Wheeler, even as she agreed to send Sargent's case forward. Both men were charged with two counts of second-degree felony manslaughter on Oct. 1, 2025, more than three years after the crash.
The collision occurred when a Mack dump truck driven by Sargent for Alpine Excavating struck a Honda Pilot on Big Cottonwood Canyon Road near Storm Mountain. Minnesota died at the scene from blunt-force injuries. Her mother and her 4-year-old son were taken to the hospital in critical condition, with the boy transported by air ambulance, while her 2-year-old child suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Sargent was also taken to the hospital following the crash, per the same KSL report.
A Truck With a Troubled Maintenance History
Court records described in the KSL account point to a vehicle plagued by mechanical problems well before the crash. The dump truck's annual safety inspection was last completed in November 2019, and it had multiple brake problems. Less than a month before the collision, a service call was placed because the truck would not go into reverse, and a technician told the owner that the brakes needed more work — a notation the technician also wrote on the service receipt, noting he had adjusted the brakes.
Separate reporting from the time of the crash added more detail on the truck's condition. According to Fox 13, at least two of the truck's six brakes were out of service. An earlier KSL report on the 2025 charges also noted that the truck had been red-tagged and pulled out of service by the Utah Department of Transportation in April 2021, a detail tied to litigation in the case.
What Prosecutors Argued
Deputy Salt Lake County Attorney Jennifer Zeleny argued that Sargent and Wheeler knowingly disregarded the safety risks of operating the truck in a state of disrepair, and that Wheeler recklessly tolerated Sargent's continued operation of the vehicle. Prosecutors acknowledged that Utah precedent for holding a business owner criminally responsible for a homicide is limited, and they pointed instead to Arizona cases that held businesses criminally responsible under a similar law, as well as a nurse's negligent-homicide case following an inmate's death — a case in which the nurse was ordered to stand trial but it ended in a mistrial, and she was later found not guilty.
Wheeler's attorney, David Ferguson, countered that his client was not personally aware of the risks of driving the truck and argued that prosecutors were asking the judge to speculate. Ferguson also argued there was no evidence that brake problems existed before the collision and no evidence that an annual inspection would have identified the truck's issues. He told the court that a judge cannot convict someone based on what other employees may have known, and an investigator testified that he did not investigate what Wheeler knew personally.
Sargent's Account of the Crash
Sargent testified that he was trying to travel no faster than 25 mph before the truck popped out of gear, though prosecutors alleged the truck was traveling over 52 mph when Sargent attempted to steer it back into his lane and it instead rolled onto its left side. He said he had discussed the truck popping out of gear with another driver earlier on the day of the crash, and estimated that one or two minutes elapsed between losing gear and the collision.
According to Sargent's testimony, he applied the service brakes and stood on the brake pedal with both feet but could not stop the truck, and he could not use the engine brake because the vehicle was not in gear. He said there was no indication the brakes were not working until the truck popped out of gear, and that he attempted to steer into the mountainside but instead crossed into oncoming traffic, where the truck rolled onto its left side, struck the Honda and spilled its load into the car. Wheeler, for his part, had reportedly parked the truck against the curb at one point because its brakes would not support its weight.
Company Safety Practices and the Road Ahead
Testimony also touched on Alpine Excavating's broader safety practices, with the company said to have a third party check truck tires every Sunday, drug test its drivers, and compensate drivers for pre-trip and post-trip inspections. Neither Wheeler nor Sargent was booked into jail following the charges.
Judge Kuendig's ruling came after she heard testimony from a responding officer and a collision-analysis detective in June, and after attorneys filed written briefs and presented oral arguments in September before she issued her decision. Sargent is scheduled for arraignment on Nov. 9, when he is expected to enter a plea. Minnesota's family filed a civil wrongful-death lawsuit against Alpine Excavating, Sargent and others in 2024, which was settled in July, KSL reported.
The case echoes other recent Utah prosecutions over fatal crashes involving commercial vehicles. In a separate case out of Weber County, a jury convicted a tow truck driver of negligent homicide rather than the manslaughter charge prosecutors had sought, following a trial that began in March over a 2024 crash that killed an Ogden company CEO and his daughter, according to the Deseret News.
