PIERRE, S.D. – One of the South Dakota troopers presenting evidence and analysis of Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s fatal crash into Joe Boever in the fall of 2020 said the House Select Committee on Investigations looking into impeachment had an earlier chance to hear the presentation but refused.
“Essentially, we did prepare the presentation,” South Dakota Highway Patrol Sgt Kevin Kinney told legislators, journalists, and the public at a Zoom meeting Wednesday afternoon. “Our understanding is that it was made known to them that we had a presentation that we could walk through the case, and my understanding is that the impeachment committee said no.”
Sgt Kinney also said he was 95% certain that Boever was on the shoulder of the road when Ravnsborg hit him.
When asked by a legislator if Ravnsborg engaged in distracted driving, Trooper John Berndt answered, “How else can you explain it?”
Berndt and Kinney are accident reconstructionists for the patrol.
Berndt said that the evidence shows that by the length of time it took Ravnsborg to stop, that his car ran over a rumble strip on the shoulder and had four tires on the shoulder, and that the accident threw Boever into his windshield, and the Boever was on his hood for several hundred feet led him to that conclusion.
The South Dakota Department of Public Safety opened the meeting to the public and the media but only allowed state legislators to ask questions of the two troopers.
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