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- A second driver faces charges in a 2023 Eagle Mountain road rage crash that killed two people.
- Michael Alan Landen is charged with two counts of negligent homicide and reckless driving.
EAGLE MOUNTAIN — A second driver has been charged in connection with a road rage confrontation in Eagle Mountain in 2023 that resulted in the deaths of two people.
On June 4, 2023, Michaela "Misha" Himmleberger, 47, and her boyfriend, Rodney Salm, 48, were driving in a 1987 Porsche 911 Carrera on state Route 73 in Eagle Mountain when they were slammed into by a 2016 Ford F-150 pickup truck driven by Peterson Drew Matheson.
Matheson, now 31, was trying to pass a 2014 Nissan Maxima when he hit and killed the couple. He pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter and in January was sentenced to two consecutive terms of zero to five years in the Utah State Prison.
According to court records, just four days after Matheson was sentenced, the driver of the Maxima, Michael Alan Landen, 42, of Eagle Mountain, was charged in 4th District Court with two counts of negligent homicide, a class A misdemeanor, and reckless driving, a class B misdemeanor.
Investigators say when Matheson unsuccessfully tried to pass Landen the first time, "the white truck swerved over to the right of the Maxima, driving on the shoulder of the road in what appeared to be an attempt to pass the Maxima on the right," according to charging documents.
"The white truck is traveling in the same direction, parallel to the Maxima but is off the roadway on the right shoulder of the highway. Both the Maxima and the white truck appear to be traveling at a high rate of speed," police observed in dashboard camera video, the charges continue.
Landen told investigators he was traveling between 60 mph and 65 mph at the time, but investigators believe just five seconds before the fatal crash, both vehicles were traveling an estimated 74 mph on a road with a 65 mph speed limit, charging documents state.
"While driving parallel to each other, the white truck and the Maxima made contact multiple times, resulting in damage to the sides of both vehicles. Neither the driver of the white truck or (Landen) stopped, slowed down, or otherwise allowed the other to pass. The driver of the white truck subsequently crossed the Maxima's lane of travel into oncoming traffic where it struck the Porsche head on, killing the two occupants," the charges state.
An accident reconstruction report concluded that Landen placed "his right to unrelentingly and unsafely occupy a traffic lane" over the "the safety of people and property around him," the charges allege.
