By Lori EhdeThe asphalt today is clear and dry, but Monday night and Tuesday morning a stretch of Highway 75 north of Luverne was a lethal sheet of ice.Other vehicles had lost control and landed in the ditch, but at nearly 6 a.m. Tuesday, a car spun into the lane of an oncoming vehicle.Thirty-five-year-old Todd Alan Schmuck, rural Luverne, was killed when the passenger side of his 1992 Suzuki was broadsided by a 1990 Chevy Lumina.According to the accident report from the Minnesota State Patrol, Schmuck was northbound on Highway 75 when he slid on a patch of ice 1 1/4 miles north of Luverne.It happened when Dean and Janice Kruen, both 50, Edgerton, met him coming from the other direction.Dean, who was driving, had no injuries,and Janice was treated at Sioux Valley Hospital, Sioux Falls, for what appeared to be bumps and bruises.The Kruens were wearing their seatbelts.Schmuck, who was not wearing a seatbelt, was declared dead at the scene.Both cars were totaled.The State Patrol had responded to more than six weather-related accidents on Monday alone in Southwest Minnesota, and the Rock County Sheriff’s Department assisted with 16 local accidents between Sunday and Tuesday.That doesn’t include nearly a dozen other incidents involving vehicles that simply slid into the ditch.Sheriff Mike Winkels said the road conditions were poor, but the timing of the accident made it lethal."It was loose snow with a glare sheet of ice underneath it," Winkels said. "I’m sure if the other vehicle wouldn’t have been there, it would have just spun off into the ditch like so many others."Schmuck, who graduated from Luverne in 1987, leaves behind a wife, Stacey (Michelsen), and two young children. He worked at Bayliner in Pipestone. The funeral will be at 10:30 a.m. Friday at Grace Lutheran Church. Visitation is from 6 to 8 p.m. Thursday in Dingmann Funeral Home, with the family present from 6 to 8 p.m. See page 7A for his obituary.
