He Killed Six People, Including Three Kids on a Band Trip in 2023. Just Walked Out of Jail.
The Tusky Valley crash. Jacob McDonald walked out of jail in January 2026. Mid-State Systems paid $7,040. And the industry learned exactly what it was supposed to learn from all of it: nothing.
On the morning of November 14, 2023, 54 kids and chaperones from the Tuscarawas Valley Local School District climbed onto a charter bus in eastern Ohio heading to Columbus. The marching band was going to perform at the Ohio School Boards Association conference. It was one of those days that parents take pictures and post to Facebook before the bus pulls out.
By 8:50 that morning, three of those kids were dead. Their names were John Mosley, 18. Jeffery Worrell, 18. Katelyn Owens, 15. Three adults who were there to keep them safe were also dead. Dave Kennat, 56, a teacher. Kristy Gaynor, 39, a parent chaperone. Shannon Wigfield, 45, an English teacher from Buckeye Career Center. Forty-one more people were injured, some seriously.
Jacob McDonald, 61, was driving a 2019 Freightliner Cascadia for Mid-State Systems Inc. when he hit slowed traffic on I-70 near Etna, Ohio, at approximately 72 miles per hour without touching the brake. His truck struck an SUV carrying chaperones, rode over it, and slammed into the rear of the charter bus. The impact sent the bus into another SUV and then a second commercial truck. McDonald’s semi caught fire. The flames spread to the rear of the bus. Students watched adults burn.
The NTSB’s final report, published in September 2025, used four words to describe what happened: “inattention and failure to respond.” The speed differential between McDonald’s truck and the slowed vehicles he was approaching was roughly 60 mph. This was not a close call that went wrong. This was a truck the size of a house hitting a bus full of children at highway speed with zero braking input.
That is where most people’s knowledge of this case ends. The crash, the fire, the grief. What they do not know is what came before it, and what happened after.
Start with what McDonald’s employer knew.
In March 2022, McDonald was stopped in Indiana doing 75 mph in a 60 mph zone. When the officer made contact, McDonald had his phone open and a video game was loaded and visible on the screen. He denied playing it while driving. Because the officer did not directly observe the phone in active use, no citation was issued. Mid-State Systems gave him a verbal warning. According to the NTSB, Mid-State told investigators they were not even aware McDonald had a video game open on his phone until federal crash investigators asked them about it. They learned that detail from the NTSB, not from their own safety monitoring program, because they apparently had no safety monitoring program capable of catching it.
Two months after that Indiana stop, McDonald was observed swerving left and right out of his lane on I-70 in Ohio. He had been on duty for 15 consecutive hours, which is one hour beyond the federal legal limit. On the same stretch of highway where he would kill six people eighteen months later. Mid-State gave him another verbal warning.
The NTSB specifically cited Mid-State’s failure to effectively manage driver fatigue and monitor unsafe driving as a contributing factor in the deaths. It also cited the FMCSA’s ineffective oversight of Mid-State during its New Entrant Safety Assurance Program and subsequent compliance reviews, noting the agency failed to ensure the carrier had appropriate safety management controls in place despite a documented high crash rate. Let that land. The federal program specifically designed to catch unsafe carriers before they hurt people reviewed Mid-State Systems and cleared them.
After the crash killed six people, the FMCSA came back and took another look. Their response was to fine Mid-State Systems $7,040. That is not a typo. Seven thousand and forty dollars. For six dead people, three of them children on a school band trip, the regulatory penalty to the company that employed the driver, gave him two verbal warnings and no meaningful corrective action, and whose failure the NTSB explicitly cited as a contributing cause, was $7,040. Mid-State Systems is still operating today.
McDonald’s truck had no forward collision warning system. No automatic emergency braking. No driver monitoring system to detect inattention. The NTSB noted all three technologies exist, are commercially available, and could have prevented or reduced the severity of this crash. None of them are required. Mid-State did not install them. Nobody made them. The NTSB issued eight recommendations, reiterated two more it had already issued before, and moved on to the next crash.
Now the criminal case, because this is where it gets hard to explain to people outside the industry without watching their jaw drop.
McDonald was indicted on 26 counts, including six felony counts of aggravated vehicular homicide. Convicted on all charges, he faced up to 31 years in prison. The prosecution argued that cellular data from McDonald’s phone showed approximately 38 megabytes of data per minute being consumed in the minutes before the crash, consistent with streaming high-definition video. McDonald’s phone was destroyed in the fire.
The judge, Licking County Common Pleas Judge David Branstool, found the cellular data insufficient to establish recklessness beyond a reasonable doubt. He convicted McDonald on six misdemeanor counts of vehicular homicide. Not felonies. Misdemeanors. All felony charges were dismissed. McDonald was sentenced to 18 months in local jail with credit for 323 days already served. He walked out in January 2026. His CDL is suspended for five years.
At sentencing, a community member named Phil Fortune stood in that courtroom and said he was not there to talk about what a dirtbag Jacob McDonald is. He said that instead he was telling Judge Branstool directly that he was a disgrace and the ruling was horrendous.
He was not wrong on any of that.
But here is what I want people to understand. McDonald’s sentence, as wrong as it feels, is not the most revealing number in this case. The most revealing number is $7,040. That is what six human lives cost Mid-State Systems in FMCSA penalties. That is what the regulatory system determined was appropriate accountability for a carrier that had documented knowledge of a dangerous driver, gave him two verbal warnings, installed no monitoring technology, and whose absent safety management controls the NTSB says contributed to six deaths. Seven thousand and forty dollars. You can spend more than that at a truck stop in a week.
Think about what that number communicates to every other motor carrier in the country. Think about what it communicates to every shipper and broker deciding whether to vet their carriers beyond a quick FMCSA safety score check. Think about what it communicates to drivers who watch their employer ignore their behavior twice and keep them rolling freight.
Now let’s compare this to another case, because Tusky Valley is not an isolated outcome. It is a pattern.
On June 21, 2019, a Westfield Transport driver named Volodymyr Zhukovskyy plowed into a group of motorcyclists on a New Hampshire highway, killing seven members of the Jarheads Motorcycle Club, an organization of Marine Corps veterans and their spouses. The owner of Westfield Transport, Dunyadar Gasanov, had hired Zhukovskyy despite knowing the man had a prior DUI charge and then lied to federal investigators about how long he had known him. He admitted in court that he had instructed employees to falsify driving logs and deactivate ELD devices to exceed hours-of-service limits. He pleaded guilty to three counts of making false statements to federal investigators. The government recommended a year in prison. The judge sentenced him to two months, followed by one year of supervised release during which he cannot drive commercially.
Two months. For seven dead Marines and their spouses. For falsifying records, knowingly hiring a driver with a DUI history, lying to federal investigators, and ordering his employees to cheat the system.
His co-owner and brother, Dartanayan Gasanov, who was indicted in 2021 alongside him and was accused of the same log falsification scheme, has been fighting his case ever since. He actually attempted to plead guilty in 2021 but the court did not accept that plea. He has been cycling through the legal system for over four years while the victims’ families wait.
Meanwhile, Zhukovskyy, the driver who was behind the wheel, was acquitted by a jury of all counts. Seven dead, nobody did serious time, nobody at the carrier was convicted of anything related to the deaths themselves.
And now Jacob McDonald is home after what amounts to about seven months of actual custody time for killing six people, three of them kids in band uniforms.
Here is the argument that needs to be made plainly, because I am tired of watching people dance around it.
When the penalty for killing six people is 18 months in local jail with time served, drivers do the math. When the penalty for running a carrier with nonexistent safety management controls that contributes to six deaths is a $7,040 FMCSA fine and continued operation, carriers do the math. When a company owner can falsify ELD records, lie to federal investigators, hire drivers with known DUI histories, have seven people die, and serve two months, shippers and brokers do the math. The math says the risk of getting caught and the cost of the consequences are both lower than the cost of doing it right. Until that math changes, the behavior will not change.
There is one more thing worth noting about Jacob McDonald specifically, because his attorney said he was unlikely to ever work as a truck driver again. That may be true. His CDL is suspended for five years. But a CDL suspension does not prevent someone from operating a commercial motor vehicle between 10,001 and 26,000 pounds, the weight class used by courier services, delivery companies, box trucks, and a significant portion of last-mile logistics. That category of vehicle does not require a CDL in most states. The five-year suspension that was presented at sentencing as a meaningful consequence has a hole in it you could drive a medium-duty truck through.
Six people died on I-70 on November 14, 2023. John Mosley was 18. Jeffery Worrell was 18. Katelyn Owens was 15. Dave Kennat was a teacher who got on a bus to watch his students perform. Kristy Gaynor was a parent chaperone. Shannon Wigfield was an English teacher who never made it home.
Jacob McDonald is home. Mid-State Systems paid $7,040 and kept operating. The Gasanov brothers collectively served two months between them for seven deaths in a different case. The FMCSA issued more recommendations. The NTSB wrote another 92-page report. And somewhere in Ohio tonight, the families of the Tusky Valley Six are living in a world where none of that is enough and nothing they can do will make it so.
The system is not broken. This is the system working exactly as it was designed. Designed by people who decided somewhere along the line that commercial transportation accountability should be priced like a traffic ticket and sentenced like a fender bender.
Until we decide otherwise, every carrier in this country knows the price of six lives. It is $7,040 and a verbal warning.