Man pleads guilty to reckless homicide in crash with school bus that killed 2 of his passengers

A man who hit a stopped school bus in a 2022 crash that killed two of his friends has pleaded guilty to committing reckless homicide.

Tyler Schmidt, 21, of the 43W000 block of Southgate Road in Plato Township, also pleaded guilty Wednesday to aggravated reckless driving.

He will be sentenced on April 16 by Kane County Judge David Kliment.

Kane County Assistant State’s Attorney told the judge that on Oct. 31, 2022, Schmidt was driving himself and three passengers east on Empire Road in unincorporated St. Charles.

An eastbound school bus had just stopped to drop a Lily Lake Elementary School student off at her house. Schmidt hit the back left corner. Belshan said Schmidt was driving 55 mph at the time of impact, and the car’s crash data recorder showed he applied the brake just a half-second before the crash.

The front passenger, Grace Diewald, 20, and her brother Emil, 19, who was sitting in the back right seat, died at the scene. A 17-year-old girl sitting on the back left side suffered a head injury, a bruised spinal cord, a collapsed lung, a liver laceration and a broken jaw.

Schmidt was found standing outside the car. A deputy would testify, Belshan said, that Schmidt told her the crash was his fault, that he fell asleep at the wheel and “I shouldn’t have drove.”

Belshan said Schmidt also said he had smoked about 2 grams of cannabis earlier in the day at his house before going to visit friends. Schmidt’s urine tested positive for cannabis at the hospital.

However, one of Schmidt’s attorneys, Donald Ramsell, argued that other test results from a laboratory at the University of Illinois-Chicago should be thrown out due to problems with how the laboratory measured amounts of delta-8 and delta-9 THC. Last week, DuPage County prosecutors dismissed charges in 19 cases that relied on the laboratory’s work.

Schmidt could be sentenced to up to five years on the reckless homicide and up to three years on the reckless driving charge.

Kliment ordered Schmidt to be taken into custody immediately.

As part of the plea agreement, the prosecution dropped a charge of aggravated driving under the influence of drugs — resulting in the deaths of two or more people. If Schmidt had been convicted of that charge, he would have faced a prison term of six to 28 years.

https://www.dailyherald.com/20250205/crime/man-pleads-guilty-to-reckless-homicide-in-crash-with-school-bus-that-killed-2-of-his-passengers/