DULUTH — Despite the loss of his son to a high-speed, drunken driving crash, Jason Trowbridge told a court that he stands by the man who accepted responsibility for the crime.

Darren Andrew Tenney is “like another son,” he wrote in a letter to a judge, and perhaps “God saved him … so he could help people prevent this in their lives and help them heal.”

In a highly unusual scene inside a Duluth courtroom on Wednesday, the families of both Joseph Trowbridge and Madison Warren, who died in the Sept. 9, 2023, wreck near Floodwood, asked a judge to show mercy and spare Tenney a prison sentence.

“Sitting behind bars will do nothing in this case,” Jason Trowbridge said. “Continuing to help others and heal is far better time spent for all of us, including the public.”

Judge Leslie Beiers, at

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