RIVER FALLS – After a birthday celebration at a local bar, a Stillwater man crashed a car, left his brother-in-law trapped in the passenger seat and fled in the wee hours of last Tuesday morning.

Dennis Gerard Gentner, 40, was ordered to pay $500 cash bail on a felony second-degree recklessly endangering safety charge in St. Croix County Circuit Court on Sept. 22. He will next appear in court at a preliminary hearing at 10 a.m. Oct. 3.

According to the police report: At 12:13 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 21 River Falls police responded to a mutual aid request near 1046 County Road M where a man was apparently trapped in a vehicle on fire. When officers arrived, the vehicle was not on fire, but a man later identified as Jeffrey Allen Curtis, 40, Stillwater, Minn., was trapped in the front passenger seat. He told police he had pain in his lower back and hip. His legs were wedged between the passenger side door and the dashboard.

The vehicle had crashed inside the tree line on the north side of County Road M to the east of a driveway, facing east. The Jeep Cherokee’s airbags had deployed and the engine was found 15 feet west of the SUV.

River Falls Fire personnel arrived and removed trees from the scene in order to access the passenger side door and extract Curtis, who was alone in the vehicle. Curtis told police Gentner, 40, Stillwater, Minn., had been driving but he didn’t know where he went. Lifelink helicopter transported Curtis to Regions Hospital in St. Paul with suspected serious injuries.

St. Croix County Sheriff’s Department brought in a drone with heat signature cameras and a K-9 to locate Gentner in case he was lost or injured, but their attempts weren’t successful; he also wasn’t answering his phone.

Witnesses told officers they’d been sleeping in their house nearby when a crash woke them up. One reported hearing people talking near the crash site. Officers located tire tracks in the north ditch’s grass entering the wooded area north of County Road M, which showed many broken and fallen trees. The Jeep appeared to have hit a large tree and spun around with the front end facing east.

When officers spoke to Curtis, he told police that he and Gentner had traveled to River Falls to celebrate Curtis’ birthday. They went to a bar near a stoplight around 10 p.m., where they had a few beers. When they left to go home to Stillwater, Gentner was driving and Curtis was falling asleep in the passenger seat, so he didn’t know what caused the vehicle to crash. He remembered Gentner telling him to get out of the vehicle because it was smoking, but he was trapped. Somehow Gentner had gotten out.

At 8:30 a.m., officers responded to Kwik Trip (1238 N. Main St.) where a man wearing camo and one shoe appeared to be injured. When police arrived, he was standing at the corner of North Main and Pomeroy streets. Both eyes were deep purple and dried blood was around his nose. He told police he had been with Curtis, gotten into a fight downtown and walked to Kwik Trip. The officer identified the man as Gentner, who police had been looking for. When EMS evaluated him, he had what appeared to be a seat belt abrasion across his collar bone. He continued to deny involvement in the crash and said someone must have taken his car and wrecked it after he got beat up.

After being medically cleared and arrested, Gentner told police he didn’t remember what bar they’d been to or for how long. He changed his story and said he and Curtis got into an argument while driving home and that Curtis had hit him in the back of the head with the back of his open hand. Gentner said he continued to drive but didn’t know what happened next. He couldn’t give officers answers as to where he’d been before showing up at Kwik Trip, but said he had come into town on a back road. He did say he’d woken up in a field and just started walking.