The GOP Ad Blaming Sherrod Brown for a Fatal Crash. Fact-Checkers Found No Link.

On April 11, 2026, a semitruck driven by Modou Ngom crashed into stopped traffic on Interstate 71 in Delaware County, Ohio, killing Luke Soposki (37), his wife Lynnea Soposki (36), and their one-year-old child ^[1][2]. Ngom was charged with multiple counts of aggravated vehicular manslaughter and vehicular assault, and federal prosecutors separately accused him of fraudulently obtaining U.S. citizenship and an Ohio driver's license ^[1].

Ngom entered the United States sometime in the 1990s using multiple names and dates of birth, obtained an Ohio driver's license around 2003 and a commercial license in 2007 under an alternate identity, and was naturalized as a citizen around 2015 ^[1][2]. None of that timeline touches Sherrod Brown's Senate votes, which came years after Ngom had already entered the country and built his fraudulent identity ^[1][2].

PolitiFact and FactCheck.org both dug into the specific votes the NRSC cites, including a 1996 border-enforcement bill Brown initially opposed but which passed anyway as part of an omnibus package he supported, a 2019 bill Brown co-sponsored that died without a vote, a 2021 budget amendment on ICE resources that passed despite Brown's opposing vote, and 2023-2024 votes where Brown backed bipartisan border-security and fentanyl-trafficking legislation ^[1][2].

FactCheck.org's conclusion: "none of the votes it cites indicates a connection to Ngom, as its ad contends" ^[2]. PolitiFact similarly found "no factual connection between Brown's immigration votes and the circumstances of this crash," rating the ad's central claim False ^[1].

Husted told reporters his own campaign had "nothing to do" with the ad and claimed he told the NRSC to take it down once the family objected — though the ad remained live on YouTube days later ^[3]. An NRSC spokesman defended the spot, saying "radical leftist Sherrod Brown backed open border policies that cost Ohioans their lives, without ever apologizing," without addressing the family's objections ^[4].

Jesse Mallen, Lynnea Soposki's brother, said the family was never consulted before their relatives' images and names were used: "Lynnea and Luke were not political symbols. Our grief is not raw material for a campaign, and their images are not public property to repurpose for anyone's advantage" ^[3][4]. Neither Husted's campaign nor Brown's campaign would comment further to reporters ^[4].

Two independent fact-checking organizations, using the NRSC's own cited votes, found no evidentiary link between Sherrod Brown's immigration record and the specific driver responsible for the April 2026 I-71 crash ^[1][2]. The ad conflates a real tragedy with a voting record that, on close inspection, is more nuanced than portrayed and chronologically disconnected from how Ngom entered the country and obtained his documents ^[1][2].

This is FALSE: fact-checkers found no factual basis connecting Brown's Senate votes to the crash the ad blames him for, and the victims' own family has publicly disowned the ad's use of their story ^[1][2][3][4].