A night of drinking, driving resulted in near fatality

By Dan Nienaber

MANKATO — Realizing their story was within a hair’s width of becoming another deadly tragedy involving area young people and alcohol, Chris Albachten and Travis Lux know they have plenty to be thankful for today.

Albachten, 20, is just happy he’s alive and not paralyzed. Lux, 17, is thankful he isn’t facing some serious time in a juvenile correctional facility. They’re sharing their story hoping others can learn from their mistakes.

Both were in Mankato the night of July 28 with a third friend who, as was Lux, was a juvenile at the time. They had been drinking alcohol, including shots, at a residence before leaving in Lux’s Ford Explorer. The plan was for Lux, who lives in New Ulm, to drive Albachten to his home in Klossner before returning to New Ulm with the other teen.

They were traveling the back roads, including the Judson Bottom Road, when Lux ended up on an unfamiliar stretch of gravel.

That road follows the Minnesota River past the Judson public access before making a sharp turn north. Then it quickly connects to another gravel road, which isn’t as curvy, that also follows the river toward Courtland.

Lux had accelerated to at least 60 mph and thought he was already on the straighter stretch of gravel. He wasn’t ready for the turn.

Albachten, who Lux described as the most intoxicated of the three, was sitting in the open passenger window. His feet were on the seat and he was holding on to the luggage rack on top of the Explorer.

“When I rolled and saw his feet go out the window, I thought he was dead for sure,” Lux said. “We must have rolled right over him. Then I heard him screaming. He was on the ground in some grass.”

It was obvious Albachten was seriously injured because his face was cut badly and the blood was flowing. What wasn’t obvious was that, along with broken bones in his face and arm, Albachten had a spinal injury. It’s an injury that often kills people by cutting off their ability to breathe, said his mother, Stacie Albachten.

She was the person who called 911 at about 10:20 p.m. to report the crash after her son called her on his cell phone. His lip was cut so badly, he had to hold it in place to talk to her.

The problem was Albachten didn’t know where he was. So his mother didn’t know where to tell dispatchers to send an ambulance.

“I called 911, and I didn’t know what to tell them,” Stacie said. “I could understand (Chris), but he was crying a lot. I asked the dispatchers if they could track his cell phone to find him, but they said they couldn’t do that.”

The teen passenger called for a ride and left Lux and Albachten at the scene.

Lux had called a cousin for a ride. He said he lost track of Albachten, who, with his spinal injury, shouldn’t have been able to get up and walk away.

Albachten had gotten up, though. He told dispatchers, who had taken over for his mother, that he was pounding on the door to a house at about 11:10 p.m., more than a half hour after the crash.

No one answered. But, about 15 minutes later, Albachten found an envelope in a mailbox. It gave the name of a person living at the residence and an address.

Within a couple of minutes, Albachten was found by firefighters who already were searching the area. The crumpled Explorer was about a half mile away.

After turning her son over to dispatchers, Stacie Albachten and her husband, also named Chris, got into their car and started driving toward Mankato.

“By the time we got to Nicollet, I told my husband to call 911 to see if they had found him,” she said. “They said he had been located just north of Judson.”

They immediately turned south on Nicollet County Road 23. She remembers seeing all the flashing emergency lights after they passed the Nicollet South Bike Shop before heading down the hill toward Judson.

“There was a helicopter, and I remember feeling something was wrong,” she said.

Her husband attempted to calm her by saying a helicopter is probably sent out to all rollover crashes. That worked until she saw someone being loaded inside and heard emergency radio traffic asking if the victim’s parents were at the scene.

“They wouldn’t let us see him,” she said. “I didn’t believe it was Chris because I had been talking to him on the phone. When they told me he was going to Rochester or the Cities, that’s when I panicked.”

Doctors were still working on Albachten when his parents arrived at St. Marys Hospital in Rochester at about 4 a.m. He was humming to ease the pain and hadn’t had the blood cleaned off his face.

“I was scared to touch him,” his mother said. “I wouldn’t have recognized him because he was so puffy.”

Although he still has to wear a neck brace, Albachten is doing better now. Lux, whose blood-alcohol concentration was .09 the night of the crash, pleaded guilty to criminal vehicular operation and drunken-driving charges in juvenile court. He’s facing sentencing Dec. 7, but said he’s already learned his lesson.

The insurance companies haven’t paid Albachten’s medical bills and a civil lawsuit has been filed. His family has hired a Minneapolis law firm to handle that case.

All that isn’t easy to deal with, but Stacie Albachten said she’s just happy her son is alive and recovering. His grandfather had died a short time before the crash. The family wouldn’t have been able to work through the more tragic death of such a young man, she said.

“We’re thankful, very thankful,” she said. “He’s my son and it could have been worse — way, way worse. We still think his grandfather had to have been there with him.”