A 30-year-old Twin Cities man has pleaded guilty to being extremely drunk when he drove his SUV the wrong way near Northfield and crashed head-on into an Iowa attorney who was heading home from a concert in St. Paul.
Brandon P. Dellwo, of Shakopee, entered his plea Monday in Rice County District Court in connection with the collision on Aug. 8 shortly after midnight on westbound Hwy. 19 between Lonsdale and Northfield that killed Kacy E. Merseal, 29, of Des Moines, and injured her passenger.
Sentencing is scheduled for June 14 for Dellwo, who pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular homicide and criminal vehicular operation.
Merseal was engaged to be married in June. She worked as a defense attorney and was returning from a Bruno Mars concert in St. Paul that night with a friend, Merseal's fiancé wrote in a Facebook posting soon after the crash.
While in the hospital being treated for his own injuries, medical personnel and a state trooper heard Dellwo say multiple times, "I just killed someone," the criminal complaint said.
Law enforcement then took Dellwo to jail, where a preliminary breath test revealed his blood alcohol content to be 0.266 percent, more than three times the legal limit for driving in Minnesota.
Dellwo's criminal history in Minnesota since he became an adult also includes two misdemeanor alcohol convictions as well as convictions three times for speeding, once for a red-light violation and another for operating an ATV without a license.
