A U.S. District Court in Brunswick, Ga., has sentenced Matthew L. Gessner, a former driver for Wytheville, Va.-based Carson Brown Trucking Inc., to 10 months in prison followed by three years probation for making false statements on his commercial driver’s license daily logbooks. Gessner was indicted by a federal grand jury in March 2006, and he pled guilty in May.
On Sept. 12, 2004, Gessner’s truck veered off Interstate 95 in Camden County, Ga., striking a parked vehicle and killing a 10-year-old child. An investigation conducted jointly by the Department of Transportation’s Office of Inspector General and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration found that Gessner had fallen asleep at the wheel after driving 19 hours without rest and that he had falsified his logbook on several prior occasions to conceal his hours-of-service violations.
A state vehicular homicide charge is pending.
