‘I Didn’t See What I Hit’: South Dakota AG Speaks Out After Fatal Car Crash
‘COOPERATING FULLY’
Andy Clark/Reuters
South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg said in a Monday night statement that when he struck and killed 55-year-old Joe Boever Saturday night, he thought he’d just hit a deer. It wasn’t until the next day that he found Boever’s body with his chief of staff, he said. “I didn’t see what I hit and stopped my vehicle immediately to investigate,” his statement reads. Ravnsborg said he looked around using his cellphone’s flashlight, but saw nothing. A sheriff’s deputy who arrived on the scene helped the attorney general fill out collision paperwork, but also didn’t find anything amiss, he claims. “At no time did either of us suspect that I had been involved in an accident with a person,” Ravnsborg said. He said it wasn’t until he was driving back to return the sheriff’s car, which he’d borrowed overnight, that he saw Boever’s body in a patch of grass. The attorney general said he had not been drinking before the crash, and provided witnesses and a blood draw to law enforcement as confirmation. “I’m deeply saddened by the tragic nature of these events and my heartfelt condolences go out to the Boever family,” the statement says.