Felon sent to prison for crash that killed brother
WHITEHALL - A 31-year-old Galesville man convicted of multiple felony charges and sentenced to prison in 2006 for holding an Eau Claire family hostage was sentenced Tuesday in Trempealeau County Court to seven more years in prison.
James M. Pederson also was sentenced to seven years of extended supervision when released from prison, and was ordered to pay $3,529 in restitution and fines.
Pederson pleaded no contest in April to homicide by intoxicated use of a motor vehicle for a Nov. 28 crash in which his brother, Dillon Pederson, 19, of Minneapolis, was killed along Highway 93, south of Arcadia.
Pederson also pleaded no contest and was found guilty of aggravated battery of an elderly person, as party to the crime and as a repeat offender.
Earlier that day the Pedersons were involved in a bar fight in Galesville in which they knocked down a man and kicked him in the head.
At the accident site, James Pederson said neither he nor his brother were the driver of the vehicle, but the real driver must have “run off.”
Pederson pleaded guilty to four felonies, including armed robbery in Eau Claire County, and was sentenced in March 2006 to eight years in prison, followed by four years of extended supervision. He was released in September 2010.
Pederson was one of three men convicted of breaking into an Eau Claire home in January 2005 and pointing guns at a couple and their 1-year-old daughter. The family was held hostage for about an hour. The intruders ransacked the house, loaded stolen items into the family’s SUV and left.
