South Dakota government Kristi Noem on Tuesday called on the state’s attorney general to resign as lawmakers began an indictment against him and officials released videos of police interviews about the night he raped a man. hit and killed with his car last year.
Attorney General Jason R. Ravnsborg, who initially told authorities he had hit something he said was likely to be a deer, refuted the growing pressure to resign.
Mr. Ravnsborg was charged last week with reckless driving, using a mobile electronic device and failing to stay in his lane on the night of the crash in September last year. The charges are offenses, and each carries a fine of up to 30 days in jail and a fine of $ 500.
Me. Name requested people to watch the videos released by the state. It shows how the Attorney General is confronted by investigators, including one who makes a powerful allegation about the impact of the victim and tells him, ‘We know his face came through your windshield. ”
The governor said in a brief statement that the attorney general should resign because of the charges and the investigation into them. “Both Ms. Noem and Mr. Ravnsborg are Republicans.
In the Statehouse, a dual group of lawmakers has tabled a resolution calling for Mr. To accuse Ravnsborg and wrote that the Attorney General has a “special obligation to the people and the laws of the State of South Dakota”. Mr. Ravnsborg, the resolution reads, should be “removed from office because of his crimes or three offenses in the office that caused the death” of the victim, Joe Boever.
Should a majority of House lawmakers advance the indictment, it would require two-thirds of South Dakota state senators to remove him from office. The Attorney General’s office could not be immediately reached for comment.
Days after the accident, Mr. Ravnsborg said in a statement that he personally found the body of Mr. Boever found. But the two videos gave the first examples of mr. Ravnsborg, 44, a Republican who took office in January 2019 and tells the story of what happened on camera that evening.
Special agents from the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation, who assisted with the investigation, conducted the interviews. In the first, from 14 September, Mr. Ravnsborg told investigators he drove home from a Republican Party dinner alone on the night of Sept. 12, and after passing through the town of Highmore, he accelerated to about 67 miles per hour. on American Highway 14.
“And then honestly, wham,” he said. ‘I hit, the incident happened. I never saw anything to 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 takes a photo of the front of his vehicle.
“I think it’s 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, but only debris from his car. .
After the sheriff arrived, he made arrangements for a towing vehicle to tow the Ford Taurus away from the attorney general and a vehicle to Mr. Ravnsborg borrowed to drive home.
The next morning, on his way to return the vehicle, Mr. stopped. Ravnsborg and a staff member at the crash scene and tore on foot to look around, said Mr. Ravnsborg said.
Mr. Ravnsborg is on the left. “At first I thought I saw what looked like a brown or a deer in the ditch,” he told investigators. ‘But then I came up. It was the man. And he’s not good. I mean, he’s dead. ”
The two men then bring the sheriff, and the dead man is identified as Mr. Boever (55) of Highmore, SD. He had apparently been walking along the highway to his disabled truck.
When investigators told in the first interview that they found broken glasses in his car, Mr. Ravnsborg did not say whether it belonged to him, although he said he did not wear glasses.
In the second interview, on September 30, Mr. Ravnsborg said that the glasses to Mr. Boever belongs. “It means his face came through your windshield,” said one of the investigators. Mr. Ravnsborg said he did not see blood or glasses.
“We know his face came through your windshield,” said one investigator. The vehicle also had an imprint of at least part of the man’s body on the hood, an investigator said, saying: “at some point he rolls down and slides into the ditch.”
“I never saw him,” he said. Ravnsborg said.
Mr. Boever also carried a flashlight that was still on when his body was found the next day. Mr. Ravnsborg said he had not yet seen that light on the side of the road, and that he “only the next day” knew it was a man.
“I think you had an idea it was something other than a deer,” an investigator pressed.
“I just believed it was a deer,” he replied. Ravnsborg.
Nick Nemec, one of Mr. Boever’s cousins, said the family is not sure why Mr. Boever walked back that night to his truck that had stopped along the road after hitting a hay bale. He said the family was upset about what they heard in the videos.
“It’s even worse than we thought,” he said. Nemec said in an interview Wednesday.
He said Mr. Boever worked in a grocery store in Highmore, where he had shelves of supplies, got goods for customers, and made purchases. He moved to the village about five years ago, renovated a small house, made a garden and donated jade plants to the people he cared about.
He got married in the early 50s, Mr. Nemec said and had six siblings.
“He was not a rich powerful person like Ravnsborg was, but he was a real person with real life with people who really cared about him,” he said. Nemec said.
Prosecutors said the results of toxicology show no signs that Ravnsborg was under the influence of alcohol or drugs. The victim’s family questioned why Mr. Ravnsborg was not tested on the night of the collision.
After the accident, Mr. Ravnsborg issued a statement saying he was “shocked and filled with sadness” and that he was “fully cooperating in the investigation.” He also expressed his “deep sympathy and sympathy with the family” of the victim.
During one of the interviews, Mr. Ravnsborg defended his behavior, saying he was thinking about what he would have done differently. “I’m in an extremely difficult place,” he said. “But I believe I did nothing wrong and that, of course, I repeated it a thousand times in my mind.”
“I never saw it – now I’ve learned – or something I hit, and from there I tried to respond appropriately,” he said.