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Truck driver convicted of killing father, 2 children in distracted driving crash
Дата публикации: 06-08-2026 13:16:47



A Philadelphia commercial truck driver was convicted of killing a father and his two children in a Pennsylvania Turnpike crash after prosecutors said he was distracted by his cellphone.
Santos M. Valentin, 31, was found guilty of three counts of homicide by vehicle, three counts of involuntary manslaughter and six summary traffic offenses, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney’s Office.
The crash happened in July 2024, near mile marker 268.7 in Penn Township, about three miles east of the Lancaster-Lebanon interchange.
Prosecutors argued Valentin “recklessly turned a 47,000-pound double-tractor-trailer he was driving into a ‘missile’ that careened down the highway when he created a ‘blind spot of his own making in his hands’ by paying attention to his phone instead of the road.”
“He might as well have been driving with his eyes closed,” Assistant District Attorney Kyle Linardo had told the jury during the three-day trial.
The crash killed 43-year-old Donnell Hickson, of Baldwin, New York, his 18-year-old son Decir Hickson and his 11-year-old daughter.
Prosecutors said Valentin’s FedEx tractor-trailer rear-ended the Hicksons’ vehicle before pushing it into a drainage culvert. The momentum carried the tractor and the first of its two trailers over the top of the Hicksons’ vehicle. Both vehicles came to a final rest with the second trailer on top of the car in a tree line about 60 feet from the turnpike’s eastbound lanes.
While testifying, Valentin admitted he had never seen the Hicksons’ vehicle before striking it, claiming he was using a navigation app on his phone to find a gas station.
In an initial interview with police, prosecutors said Valentin claimed the Hicksons’ car had “come out of nowhere.”
An attorney who represented Valentin argued that he lacked the time to safely avoid the collision, but in his closing argument, officials said Linardo played a series of videos and still images from inside the cabin of the tractor-trailer in which Valentin appeared to be scrolling through social media and applications on his phone for five minutes before the crash. 
“He never had a chance to do anything because he wasn’t paying attention,” Linardo had told the jury.
During the investigation, prosecutors said Pennsylvania State Police obtained more than eight hours of inward and outward-facing dash camera footage from Valentin’s vehicle. One image showed that Valentin may have been texting in the moment before the crash.
The jury returned a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberation, prosecutors said. Valentin is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date.


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A Philadelphia commercial truck driver was convicted of killing a father and his two children in a Pennsylvania Turnpike crash after prosecutors said he was distracted by his cellphone.

Santos M. Valentin, 31, was found guilty of three counts of homicide by vehicle, three counts of involuntary manslaughter and six summary traffic offenses, according to the Lancaster County District Attorney's Office.

The crash happened in July 2024, near mile marker 268.7 in Penn Township, about three miles east of the Lancaster-Lebanon interchange.

Prosecutors argued Valentin "recklessly turned a 47,000-pound double-tractor-trailer he was driving into a 'missile' that careened down the highway when he created a 'blind spot of his own making in his hands' by paying attention to his phone instead of the road."

“He might as well have been driving with his eyes closed,” Assistant District Attorney Kyle Linardo had told the jury during the three-day trial.

The crash killed 43-year-old Donnell Hickson, of Baldwin, New York, his 18-year-old son Decir Hickson and his 11-year-old daughter.

Prosecutors said Valentin’s FedEx tractor-trailer rear-ended the Hicksons’ vehicle before pushing it into a drainage culvert. The momentum carried the tractor and the first of its two trailers over the top of the Hicksons’ vehicle. Both vehicles came to a final rest with the second trailer on top of the car in a tree line about 60 feet from the turnpike’s eastbound lanes.

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While testifying, Valentin admitted he had never seen the Hicksons' vehicle before striking it, claiming he was using a navigation app on his phone to find a gas station.

In an initial interview with police, prosecutors said Valentin claimed the Hicksons’ car had “come out of nowhere.”

An attorney who represented Valentin argued that he lacked the time to safely avoid the collision, but in his closing argument, officials said Linardo played a series of videos and still images from inside the cabin of the tractor-trailer in which Valentin appeared to be scrolling through social media and applications on his phone for five minutes before the crash. 

“He never had a chance to do anything because he wasn’t paying attention,” Linardo had told the jury.

During the investigation, prosecutors said Pennsylvania State Police obtained more than eight hours of inward and outward-facing dash camera footage from Valentin’s vehicle. One image showed that Valentin may have been texting in the moment before the crash.

The jury returned a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberation, prosecutors said. Valentin is scheduled to be sentenced at a later date.

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