Officers found a woman dead inside a vehicle at the scene of a crash in southern Minnesota and arrested the driver after determining the wreck did not kill her, officials said Monday.
Deputies were dispatched to the crash around 7 a.m. Saturday on eastbound Interstate 90 near the freeway. 42 exit south of Eyota, according to the Olmsted County Sheriff’s Office. A state trooper reported the vehicle struck a guardrail, a state police spokeswoman said.
The 32-year-old driver was out of the vehicle and was being attended to by a passerby, the Sheriff’s Office said. Officers soon found a 35-year-old woman dead in the backseat.
“The decedent’s condition was suspicious and it was immediately apparent that the death was not the result of a motor vehicle accident,” a statement from the Sheriff’s Office said. The statement did not elaborate on what led deputies to consider the death suspicious. The woman’s identity has not yet been released.
Minneapolis police became involved that afternoon when the BCA requested officers conduct a welfare check at the dead woman’s address in the 700 block of 16th St. E. in Minneapolis. That night, officers executed a search warrant at the address. They found “a scene indicative of violence” in the home, Minneapolis police said in a news release.
The driver was medically checked at a nearby hospital, after which she was booked into jail on suspicion of interfering with a corpse. Charges have yet to be filed. The Star Tribune does not typically identify suspects before they are charged.
