Wrong-Way Driver Accused Of Killing Five Not Sane Enough For Trial, Court Finds

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Wrong-Way Driver Accused Of Killing Five Not Sane Enough For Trial, Court Finds

A Wyoming District Court judge says Arthur Nelson, 58, is not sane enough to face trial for driving the wrong way on Interstate 80 and causing a crash that killed five young Bible college visitors.

Clair McFarland
July 31, 2023
4 min read



The man accused of being high on meth while driving the wrong way on Interstate 80 and triggering a chain-reaction crash that killed five young people from Arkansas is not mentally fit to face prosecution, a Wyoming district court judge has ruled. ... Arthur Andrew Nelson, 58, of Limestone, Tennessee, is being committed to a Wyoming mental health facility, where state employees will try to make him well enough to face five counts of aggravated vehicular homicide for allegedly causing the multi-vehicle crash that killed five students on their way home from a visit to a Wyoming Bible college.

Health authorities still believe, at this point, that they can make Nelson well enough to someday return to court, according to a July 25 order by Carbon County District Court Judge Dawnessa A. Snyder. ... Snyder ordered the Wyoming State Hospital or a facility working under it to keep Nelson as a patient and treat him until he’s fit to face prosecution. ... The facility head must let the court know if Nelson gets well enough to go back to court, or if staff find that he can’t be restored mentally.

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Chain Reaction

Nelson is accused of driving east in his Dodge Ram 3500 in the westbound lane of traffic on Interstate 80 the evening of Jan. 22, colliding with a commercial truck and another car. ... “As the Dodge truck collided with the passenger car, a driver of a second commercial truck attempted to avoid the approaching truck by driving into the median,” the Wyoming Highway Patrol reported in a press release about the crash.

That second commercial truck, owned by MS Freight, went through the median and into the eastbound travel lanes, where it hit a Ford F-150 “head-on,” the report says. ... Those vehicles “immediately became engulfed in flames,” and all five people in the Ford F-150 were killed, the Highway Patrol reported. ... The driver of the MS Freight was severely burned with the truck caught fire in the crash, according to the Highway Patrol.

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Headed Home

All five of the people killed in the F-150 were young people ranging in age from 18 to 23 returning to their hometown of Sherwood, Arkansas, after a weeklong visit to Jackson Hole Bible College in Jackson, Wyoming. ... Two were seniors at Sylvan Hills High School in Sherwood, a small community about 10 miles north of Little Rock, Arkansas. The other three were recent graduates of the same high school. ... They are Suzy Prime and Ava Luplow, both high school seniors, and Salomon Correa, Magdalene “Maggie” Franco and Andrea Prime, all former Sylvan Hills High students who also attended the Bible college, said Elizabeth Dilts, a member and spokesperson designated by Faith Bible Fellowship church in Sherwood.

Clair McFarland can be reached at [e-mail].