S tate Patrol investigators still were trying to determine Monday why an 18-year-old man lost control of a pickup truck on a straight, sunny stretch of Interstate 35 Sunday before crossing the median and colliding head-on with a car -- killing a Chanhassen man and his son, 4.
By late Monday afternoon, the pickup's driver, Eric P. Sprouse, of Wyoming, Minn., was dead, too.
He was traveling north on I-35 just north of the Hwy. 8 overpass in Forest Lake on Sunday when he crossed the median and crashed into a Toyota Camry carrying James Jude Holland, 45, and his son, Jude, 4, both of Chanhassen. Both father and son died at the scene.
They were headed home after a "weekend with the boys" on a northern Minnesota lake, said Brenda Perreault, James Holland's sister-in-law.
Holland grew up in Aurora, Minn., not far from where he and Jude had been vacationing, Perreault said. He graduated from what is now Minnesota State University, Mankato, with a degree in finance and worked in sales for a major electronics company, the family said.
Holland was wearing a seat belt, and Jude, his only child, was secured in a car seat, investigators said. No one else was in the car.
The crash happened about 11 a.m. Sunday after Sprouse "lost control" of his Chevy K1500 truck, patrol spokesman Capt. Matt Langer said Monday. "But exactly why he did -- we don't know," he added. Sprouse died Monday at North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale, where he was flown after the wreck.
A passenger in his pickup, Dustin W. Covey, 20, suffered non-life-threatening injuries. Neither Sprouse nor Covey were wearing seat belts, and Sprouse was thrown from the truck, police said.