Amish Man & Horse Killed After Driver Admits Looking Away from Road

After a relatively quiet period of (at least no widely-reported) fatal Amish buggy accidents, sadly another bad one happened Tuesday afternoon. This comes out of Lafayette County, Wisconsin.

In some of these accidents, the horse survives, while a rider or driver doesn’t make it, and sometimes the reverse. But in this case, both died – following one of the most common types of car-buggy wrecks – the rear-end crash. Here are the details via KWWL:

Joseph Z. Glick of Mineral Point was driving an open-style Amish buggy pulled by a single horse northbound on Highway 23 in the Town of Willow Springs on Tuesday when a Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck hit the buggy from behind.

The crash happened around 4:18 p.m. in the 17000 block of Highway 23.

The Lafayette County Coroner’s Office pronounced Glick dead at the scene.

The driver of the pickup truck, a 36-year-old man from Dodgeville, was not hurt.

The horse’s injuries were so severe that it had to be euthanized on-scene.

Just the Latest Deadly Crash in Lafayette County

Lafayette County is home to one of Wisconsin’s larger Amish settlements, of over 1,500 people. And this community is no stranger to deadly buggy crashes.

Several years ago, a three-year-old Amish child was killed in a buggy wreck in this community. In 2020, an Amish father was killed and his toddler son seriously injured by a drunk driver.

Locals have likewise been concerned about the safety of Amish on Lafayette County roads. Two years ago WKOW covered the story of a non-Amish neighbor who was trying to get warning signs put up in the vicinity of a local Amish school, calling the situation “an accident waiting to happen”.

Driver Admits Distraction

A follow-up report just out from WKOW adds important context to this latest Lafayette County fatality: the pickup driver admits to being distracted at the time:

The truck driver is cooperating with investigators.

Gill said the driver told deputies he had seen the buggy ahead of him but looked off to the side to do something in the truck.

“All of a sudden he was [sic] hits smashed it,” Gill said.

“Gill” refers to Lafayette County Sheriff Reg Gill, who added that the buggy “was demolished and pushed into a pile, along with the horse.”

Impairment is not believed to be a factor. Distraction can be just as deadly though. And sadly that sounds like what led to this Amish man losing his life. Prayers for his family and community. And also for the pickup driver. Life can change, or be lost, in an instant.