Minneapolis man pleads guilty in Meeker County to causing head-on crash, injuring other driver

By Linda Vanderwerf

August 23, 2019 at 5:23 AM

LITCHFIELD — A Minneapolis man has pleaded guilty to a felony charge of criminal vehicular operation causing great bodily harm.

Milton David Ortiz Arocho, 40, was originally charged in December 2017 with two criminal vehicular operation felonies and two misdemeanors after a head-on collision in February 2017.

Ortiz Arocho entered a guilty plea this week in Meeker County District Court. He failed to appear for a court hearing in July 2018, and an arrest warrant was issued. He was not in court again until this month.

Ortiz Arocho is to be sentenced Oct. 7. He is currently in custody in the Meeker County Jail.

He was charged in connection to a Feb. 13, 2017, head-on collision.

According to State Patrol records, Ortiz Arocho was the driver of a vehicle that collided with a vehicle driven by an Eden Valley man who was 49 at the time.

Ortiz Arocho was accused of crossing the center line. He was allegedly under the influence of methadone, a controlled substance.

The Eden Valley man was taken to Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis with life-threatening injuries, including multiple organ lacerations, a perforated colon, a fractured femur and multiple fractures of the face, head and neck.

By Linda Vanderwerf

In 42 years in the newspaper industry, Linda Vanderwerf worked at several daily newspapers in Minnesota, including the Mesabi Daily News, now called the Mesabi Tribune in Virginia. Previously, she worked for the Las Cruces Sun-News in New Mexico and the Rapid City Journal in the Black Hills of South Dakota. She was a reporter at the West Central Tribune for nearly 27 years, and retired in 2023.