Since we posted Justice for Joe Boever: Governor Noem calls for AG Ravnsborg's resignation; articles of impeachment filed in South Dakota House yesterday afternoon, two videos of South Dakota Attorney General being interviewed about the crash that killed Joe Boever have been posted by the state of South Dakota.
The videos are at the bottom of this post. Update: At the request of AG Ravnsborg's lawyer, a judge ordered the Youtubes made private. We've updated the post with the story in the place below where we'd embedded the Youtube. [end update]
First a news digest.
Perhaps the most vivid lede? Arielle Zionts reports in the Rapid City Journal article Investigators: Ravnsborg should have seen Boever the night of the crash:
If he was paying attention, the South Dakota Attorney General should have been able to see the pedestrian before, during and after he fatally crashed into him in September, investigators said in interview videos released on Tuesday.
Joseph Boever was walking with a flashlight, crashed head-first through Jason Ravnsborg’s windshield, left behind broken glasses in his car and then came to rest near the side of the road next to the light that remained illuminated, they told the attorney general.
“They're Joe's glasses" an investigator said of the broken glasses found in Ravnsborg’s car. “That means his face comes through the windshield,” he said as the attorney general sighed and looked to the ground.
Boever's flashlight remained on when it came to rest next to him less than two feet from the shoulder of the highway, an investigator said. Boever was also stripped of his clothes during the crash, making his body quite visible.
"After the crash did you see that light in the dark?” he asked. “It’s pitch dark. If there's something glowing, it would make sense for you to see it."
We turned the flashlight on at the same spot it was found at night and "It's hard to miss. “I mean it's truly hard to miss when you're out there,” the investigator said. “That flashlight was like a beacon,” a second investigator said. . . .
Ravnsborg repeatedly insisted he was driving within the lane, wasn’t on his phone during the crash and never saw Boever until he found his body the next morning.
"I know how some of this looks, but I did not see a man until the next day,” he said. "I did not see a flashlight, I didn't see him in the face. No, I did not. I did not. I did not know it was a man until the next day. No."
“I’ll swear on a stack of bibles” and “I’ll go to my grave saying that,” Ravnsborg said.
Turing to national coverage, at the Washington Post, Andrea Salcedo reports in South Dakota AG pushed by critics to resign over new evidence in fatal car incident: ‘He knew what he hit and he lied’:
“They’re Joe’s glasses, so that means his face came through your windshield,” one of the detectives said in an interview released by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety on Tuesday. . . .
The interviews raise questions about the conduct of the state’s top law enforcement official in the Sept. 12 incident, giving fuel to a chorus of lawmakers demanding he leave office. On Tuesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers filed two articles of impeachment against Ravnsborg, who has since been charged with three misdemeanors, and South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) called for his resignation.
But Ravnsborg said that he will not step down. “At no time has this issue impeded his ability to do the work of the office,” Mike Deaver, his private spokesman, said in a statement to the Argus Leader.
Boever’s cousin, Nick Nemec, told The Washington Post the new videos confirmed what he has always believed: Ravnsborg knew he had struck a man that evening and drove away anyway.
“He knew there was a dead man in that ditch,” said Nemec, 62. “He knew what he hit and he lied.” . . .
The New York Times' Christine Hauser reported Wednesday afternoon in South Dakota Attorney General Faces Impeachment and Calls to Resign Over Crash:
State officials released videos that show investigators confronting the attorney general, Jason Ravnsborg, with descriptions of his car hitting a man: “His face came through your windshield.” . . .
Ms. Noem urged people to watch the videos released by the state, which show the attorney general being confronted by investigators, including one who makes a stark assertion about the victim’s impact, telling him, “We know that his face came through your windshield.”
The governor said in a brief statement that with charges filed and the investigation over, “I believe the attorney general should resign.” Both Ms. Noem and Mr. Ravnsborg are Republicans. . . .
Days after the crash, Mr. Ravnsborg said in a statement that he had personally found the body of Mr. Boever. But the two videos provided the first examples of Mr. Ravnsborg, 44, a Republican who took office in Jan. 2019, telling the story of what happened that night on camera.
Special Agents of the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who assisted in the investigation, conducted the interviews. In the first, from Sept. 14, Mr. Ravnsborg told investigators that he was driving home alone from a Republican Party dinner on the night of Sept. 12, and after passing through the town of Highmore, he accelerated to about 67 miles per hour on U.S. Highway 14.
“And then quite frankly, wham,” he said. “I hit, the incident happened. I never saw anything until the impact.” He said he jumped out of the car and called 911. He then hung up, used his phone’s flashlight and looked around the highway and the ditch. He took a photograph of the front of his vehicle.
“I am thinking it is a deer at this point but I did not see anything,” he told two investigators during the interview, adding that he did not see blood or fur from the impact, just debris from his car.
After the sheriff arrived, he made arrangements for a tow truck to haul the attorney general’s Ford Taurus away and lent a vehicle to Mr. Ravnsborg to drive home.
The next morning, on his way to return the vehicle, Mr. Ravnsborg and a staff member stopped at the scene of the accident, splitting up on foot to look around, Mr. Ravnsborg said.
Mr. Ravnsborg went to the left. “I initially thought I saw, it looked like a fawn or a deer in the ditch,” he told investigators. “But then I come up. It was the man. And he is not good. I mean, he is dead.”
The two men then brought the sheriff, and the dead man was identified as Mr. Boever, 55, of Highmore, S.D. He had apparently been walking along the highway to his disabled truck.
When told by investigators in the first interview that they had found a pair of broken eyeglasses in his car, Mr. Ravnsborg could not say whether they belonged to him, even though he said he did not wear glasses.
In the second interview, on Sept. 30, Mr. Ravnsborg was told the eyeglasses belonged to Mr. Boever. “That means his face came through your windshield,” one of the investigators said. Mr. Ravnsborg said he had not seen blood or the eyeglasses.
“We know that his face came through your windshield,” one investigator said. The vehicle also had an imprint from at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, adding that “at some point he rolls off and slides into the ditch.”
“I never saw him,” Mr. Ravnsborg said.
Mr. Boever was also carrying a flashlight, which was still on when his body was found the next day. Mr. Ravnsborg said he had not seen that light on the side of the road, and that he “did not know that it was a man until the next day.”
“I think you had an idea that it was something other than a deer though,” an investigator pressed.
“I just believed it was a deer,” Mr. Ravnsborg replied.
Nick Nemec, one of Mr. Boever’s cousins, said the family was not sure why Mr. Boever had walked that night back to his truck, which had stopped on the side of the road after it hit a hay bale. He said the family was distressed by what they heard in the videos.
“It is even worse than we thought,” Mr. Nemec said in an interview on Wednesday.
For the Daily Beast, Tom Lawrence reports in Victim That South Dakota AG ‘Didn’t See’ Came Through His Windshield, Investigators Say:
During an interrogation on Sept. 30, investigators noted Boever’s glasses were found inside Ravnsborg’s 2011 Ford Taurus.
“That means his face came through your windshield,” said a North Dakota Bureau of Investigation agent, one of two who questioned Ravnsborg for more than three hours in a pair of sessions.
“His face is in your windshield,” the agent said as Ravnsborg groans. “Think about it.”
Ravnsborg said he didn’t see the glasses, either, even when he later went through the front seat looking for an insurance card to show to Hyde County Sheriff Mike Volek, who lives near the crash site and responded to the 911 call.
The agent said the broken glasses found inside Ravnsborg’s car belonged to Boever, who was walking into Highmore when he was struck and killed.
Ravnsborg also was asked why he didn’t see a flashlight Boever was carrying when the crash occurred at 10:24 p.m. When the agents arrived from North Dakota, it was still on, shining “like a beacon,” they said.
The agents also told Ravnsborg they knew he was on the shoulder of the road when the crash occurred. He did not have an explanation for why he was there.
The investigators also noted he had made calls and looked at websites while he was driving from the Republican Party event in Redfield back to Pierre, the state capital. Ravnsborg had clicked on a Real Clear Politics story on Joe Biden and China just before the crash. He told investigators he had set the phone down before the impact.
“I believe I did not do anything wrong,” Ravnsborg said. “I did not see him or anything. I did not know it was a man until the next day.”
Huffpo shares the Associated Press's coverage in Police Grill South Dakota AG About Not Noticing He Struck A Man With Car:
Investigators questioning South Dakota’s attorney general after a fatal car crash pressed him on how he did not realize he had struck a man and whether he had been reading email and checking news sites on his phone immediately before, according to videos of their interviews.
In two videos released by Gov. Kristi Noem late Tuesday, criminal investigators confront the state’s top law enforcement officer, Jason Ravnsborg, with gruesome details of the crash, at one point telling him: “His face was in your windshield, Jason, think about that.”
Ravnsborg appeared unsure of how he had swerved onto a highway shoulder and killed 55-year-old Joseph Boever, but detectives told him Boever’s glasses had been found inside his Ford Taurus and that bone scrapings were found on the rumble strip of the highway shoulder. Investigators said they found one part of Boever’s severed glasses on the front, passenger-side floorboard and the other part in the back seat. . . .
The detectives also questioned how Ravnsborg could have searched the area with his cellphone flashlight, at one point walking right by Boever’s body, and not seen his body. They pointed out that part of Boever’s white skin was exposed and a flashlight he had been carrying was still on. The detectives said it would have been hard to miss both Boever’s body, lying in the grass near the highway pavement, and a flashlight shining on a dark night.
Ravnsborg insisted he saw neither and pointed out that the sheriff and tow truck driver who arrived later also had not spotted Boever’s body or the flashlight. Earlier in the interview, the attorney general told detectives that he had no idea he had killed a man until the next day when he stopped by the accident scene with his chief of staff, Tim Bormann. . . .
The national coverage reflects that of venues closer to home. At the Dakota Free Press blog, Cory Allen Heidelberger reports in Noem Pushing Ravnsborg to Resign as She Preps for Big Texas, Florida Fundraisers:
Governor Kristi Noem needed to get in front of Jason Ravnsborg’s impeachment and call for his resignation, not only because he’s a lying sack of crap, but also because she has two big fundraisers this weekend, and out-of-state donors might not be as free with their cash if they had questions about why Kristi was covering for a killer.
One detail about impeachment from Heidelberger: Senate Must Wait 20 Days to Try Ravnsborg After Impeachment Vote.
For the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, Danielle Ferguson, Joe Sneve, and Jonathan Ellis report in 'His face was in your windshield, Jason.' Ravnsborg videos provide more details about fatal crash:
North Dakota investigators were skeptical that South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg didn't know he had struck and killed a pedestrian on the night of Sept. 12, 2020.
According to video footage from two separate interviews between investigators and Ranvsborg, made public Tuesday by the South Dakota Department of Public Safety, authorities found the reading glasses of Joe Boever inside the Ford Taurus that killed him.
"His face was in your windshield, Jason. Think about that," a detective with the North Dakota Bureau of Investigation said during an interrogation Sept. 30.
The Argus Leader article includes a timeline of notable statements from the two interviews.
Here are the YouTubes of the two interviews Note: a judge's order made the state of South Dakota remove the links to the YouTubes, should they not be available for you.
Update: For the Rapid City Journal, Arielle Zionts reports in Judge orders state to stop sharing Ravnsborg evidence, remove videos:
The judge overseeing Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s criminal case has ordered state government to stop releasing evidence and delete two videos of his police interviews it already shared.
“This is highly unprecedented, and release of this type of information to the public before it has even been released to defense counsel creates great fairness and prejudice,” defense lawyer Timothy Rensch of Rapid City wrote in a motion filed Thursday. “If such order is not granted, the selective and unprecedented release of this nonpublic information will create irreparable harm to the defendant.”
Emily Sovell, deputy state’s attorney for Hyde County, tried to stop Gov. Kristi Noem from releasing the videos on Tuesday, the motion says. . . .
South Dakota law says investigative materials from law enforcement agencies are not public records. DPS, the Attorney General's Office, the Rapid City Police Department and the Pennington County Sheriff's Office have denied the Journal's requests for videos and other evidence, often related to law enforcement using serious or lethal force against civilians. . . .
Read about the entire hot mess at the Rapid City Journal, where Zionts has the receipts. {end update]
Related posts:
- Justice for Joe Boever: Governor Noem calls for AG Ravnsborg's resignation; articles of impeachment filed in South Dakota House
- Attorney General Ravnsborg charged with 3 misdemeanors in crash that killed Joe Boever
- Twitter memorials: 5 months ago, South Dakota Attorney General Ravnsborg killed Joe Boever
- Daily Beast: Ravnsborg killed a man. Family members fear Joe Boever has been forgotten
- Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Noem supports using grand jury to speed up Ravnsborg killing probe
- States attorneys looking into killing of Joseph Boever by AG Ravnsborg not talking to Noem
- Rapid City Journal: After 4 months, still no decision on whether AG Ravnsborg will be charged for killing Joseph Boever
- AP: Prosecutors waiting on debris testing in SD Attorney General killing of Joseph Boever
- Governor Kristi Noem takes off her positive pants, given pace of Ravnsborg investigation
- Well, that's illuminating: South Dakota Highway Patrol’s accident report on Boever killing
- South Dakota News Watch: Crash experts question Ravnsborg’s car-deer explanation
- SD News Watch: State's criminal & civil traffic laws favor drivers over pedestrians in collisions
- UPDATED: Joe Boever's tragic death on Hwy 14: news digest about Ravnsborg's fatal accident
Photo: Ravnsborg's Taurus, via Rapid City Journal. From the New York Times' transcription:"“We know that his face came through your windshield,” one investigator said. The vehicle also had an imprint from at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, adding that “at some point he rolls off and slides into the ditch.”
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