Man charged in 'horrific' 11-vehicle crash that killed 3 people

Charges have been laid after an 11-vehicle crash that killed three people on Highway 9 last August.

Daniel Zacharias Wollmann, 22, from Mitchell, Man., is facing a number of charges, including three counts of dangerous driving causing death and 14 charges of dangerous driving causing injury.

The collision happened on Aug. 20, 2019, in a construction zone on Highway 9, near Range Road 73, between the hamlet of Chinook and the Village of Cereal.

Three semi-trailer trucks were involved, one of which was hauling fuel, and another butane. The flames engulfed the entire crash site.

• 3 people dead in 'horrific' 10-vehicle crash in highway construction zone

RCMP from Oyen confirmed that three people involved in the collision had died at thescene.

The AlbertaMinistry of Transportation announcedthat it wouldconduct an investigation into the crash.

Wollmann is scheduled to appear in Hanna Provincial Court on April 22, 2020. As the matter is before the courts, no more information will be released at this time, RCMP said.

'It was horrific'

In an interview with CBC News in 2019, a woman who drove past the crash shortly after it happened said she hadpassed the same tanker on the highway earlier, but had stopped for something to eat at a truck stop.

"I saw the smoke as I was driving toward it, and it got blacker and blacker. I thought it was maybe a brush fire it was horrific. It's a horrific scene," Linda Nothing said.

An evacuation alert wasissued on the evening of the crash, warning people not to stay in the area because of the smoke.

The crash took placeroughly two weeks after another crashinvolving two semis and an SUV,at a nearby construction sitenorthwest of Oyen. An 11-year-old was killed and four members of his family were hospitalized.

In January, RCMP in Alberta said they had charged the driver of a semi-tractor-trailer, 37-year-oldLowell Nathan Dyck.

Oyen is locatedjust east of Chinook and Cereal, just west of the Saskatchewan boundary, androughly 300 kilometres east of Calgary.