Man gets 30 years for fatal wrong-way crash

A 35-year-old man who was intoxicated and driving the wrong way on I-43 when he slammed head-on into a vehicle, killing a couple from Oostburg and seriously injuring their daughter near Port Washington on Memorial Day 2025, was sentenced Tuesday to 30 years in prison by an Ozaukee County judge who said she was punishing him for his “staggering recklessness that shattered an innocent family.”

Ace Vue of Milwaukee, who authorities say passed 24 vehicles at speeds that often exceeded 100 mph while driving the wrong way on the freeway for seven minutes, was also sentenced by Judge Sandy Williams to 25 years of extended supervision following his incarceration in connection with the deaths of Jay and Nicole Horne and the serious injuries suffered by their daughter Allissa, who was 22 at the time.

The prison sentence imposed by Williams was significantly longer than the 20 years behind bars requested by Ozaukee County District Attorney Benjamin Lindsay and the 14 years recommended by a Wisconsin Department of Corrections agent who wrote a presentence report. Vue’s attorney, Kevin Gaertner, asked that Vue be sentenced to 12 years in prison.

“The consequences in this case are horrifying,” Williams told Vue. “Your actions demonstrated a complete disregard for human life.”

In February, Williams accepted Vue’s no contest pleas and found him guilty of two counts of homicide by the intoxicated use of a vehicle and injury by the intoxicated use of a vehicle.

Seven felony counts of first-degree recklessly endangering safety were dismissed as part of a plea agreement but read into the record, which meant that Williams could consider the facts surrounding those charges when sentencing Vue.

During the emotional sentencing hearing, Jay Horne’s brother Kevin said it was  Jay and Nicole’s son and Allissa’s younger brother who called to tell him about the crash.

“He’s the one who had to tell me my brother and sister-in-law were gone,” he said. “No child should ever have to make that call.”

It was up to him, Kevin Horne said, to identify the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law.

“That responsibility is a burden that will weigh on me forever,” he said, telling Vue that what occurred on May 26, 2025, was not an “unavoidable accident” but a tragedy that resulted from “a choice to drive drunk and a choice to drive the wrong way on the freeway.”

Described as inexplicable, Vue’s behavior would have been even more of a mystery had it not been for video from the dash camera of his 2025 Lexus IS sedan, which showed him driving south on I-43 from Sheboygan County in the correct lanes, then exiting the freeway on the north side of Port Washington.

He crossed the I-43 overpass on Highway H and got back on the freeway, driving north in the correct lanes until he was north of Belgium, where he drove through the grass median of the freeway and headed south in the southbound lanes.

He exited the freeway at Belgium, then re-entered it and drove north in the northbound lanes until he was just south of Cedar Grove, where he did a U-turn and began driving south in the northbound lanes around 12:30 a.m.

Both Lindsay and Gaertner said Vue’s driving was so bizarre that at one point during the investigation they wondered if he may have been trying to commit suicide but ultimately realized that wasn’t the case.

“It may have been that he was just so impaired that he wasn’t aware of his location,” Lindsay said. “I have no other explanation.”

A segment of the video played during Tuesday’s hearing shows Vue driving the wrong way in what for him was the right lane, as if he thought he was on a divided highway and on-coming traffic was supposed to be passing on his  his left, Gaertner said.

The video shows semitrucks and cars flashing their lights to try to get Vue’s attention as he sped south, regularly exceeding 100 mph and topping out at 110 mph.

Just before the video ends, two sets of headlights can be seen in the distance. The Hornes’ Ford Escape, driven by Mrs. Horne, was passing another vehicle in the left lane at the time of the crash and she had no room to swerve to avoid Vue. The headlights of her vehicle fill the frame of Vue’s dash camera a split-second before impact. He was traveling at 92 mph when he hit the Escape.

The family was retuning home from Mitchell Airport in Milwaukee, where Mr. and Mrs. Horne picked up Allissa after a trip to visit friends.

Officers arrived at the scene to find the Hornes’ vehicle had suffered “devastating damage.” Mr. Horne, who was a front seat passenger in the vehicle, was found in the median deceased. Mrs. Horne was pinned in the vehicle. Emergency responders initially detected a pulse, but she quickly died, the complaint states.

Allissa Horne, who was in the back seat, was pinned in the vehicle and conscious. After being extricated from the vehicle, she was taken by ambulance to Froedtert Hospital. She suffered two broken femurs, a broken sternum and ribs and multiple other broken bones, Lindsay said.

“My baby cousin had to watch her mother die,” Jay and Nicole Horne’s niece Cassandra Horne said during the sentencing hearing.

Allissa had to endure not only excruciating physical pain but the unbearable emotional pain of losing both her parents in the blink of an eye, she said.

“You took two humans away,” she told Vue. “You took two parents away at one time.”

Prior to the crash, Vue had been at the funeral for his grandfather in Sheboygan, an elaborate Hmong affair at which there was heavy drinking, Gaertner said, adding that it is tradition for men in the host  family, which included Vue, to toast the deceased with the mourners as they pay their respects.

Realizing Vue was highly intoxicated, his family was keeping an eye on him and thought incorrectly they had taken away his car key, Gaertner said. But Vue, who said he does not remember leaving the funeral or driving, apparently went to the bathroom, then left the funeral and drove away instead of getting a ride to his uncle’s house, where he had planned to spend the night.

Vue, who has a degree in computer engineering and was growing his accounting business at the time of the crash, apologized to the Horne family during Tuesday’s hearing.

“There really are no words to carry the weight of the crimes I committed here,” he said. “To the victims’ family, I’d like to apologize. I’m deeply sorry for what I’ve done. I was intoxicated and I should have never been behind the wheel that night.

“If I could just switch places with the victims who died I would in a heartbeat.”

It wasn’t Vue’s first time driving while drunk. He was cited for first-offense driving while intoxicated in 2019.

“One of the most aggravating parts of this is that you had a prior OWI,” Williams said, noting that first-offense drunken driving is not a criminal offense in Wisconsin. “Maybe that needs to change because we have a culture where drinking and driving is acceptable, and it shouldn’t be.

“The irony is you leave a funeral and cause a fatal crash and the victims’ family has to plan funerals.”