South Dakota

As USA Today reports, the South Dakota department of public safety released video of agents from the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation interviewing Ravnsborg on September 30, just over two weeks after the September 12 fatal incident. During the interview, the detectives reveal a damning piece of evidence that casts doubt on Ravnsborg’s claim that he did not realize he had hit a person: Boever’s eye glasses were found inside Ravnsborg’s car.

“His face was in your windshield, Jason. Think about that,” a detective says in the video.

“We know his face came through your windshield.”
Ravnsborg reportedly denied ever seeing the glasses in his car, though he said he did notice broken windshield shards on the front seat when he went into his glove compartment to get the registration after she sheriff arrived. The attorney general insisted that he was not distracted by his phone at the moment of impact.

“Quite frankly, ‘wham’ the incident happened,” Ravnsborg said in the interview, clapping his hands together when he said ‘wham.’

But investigators reportedly accessed cell phone data that suggests Ravnsborg was in fact using his phone around the time of the collision. According to USA Today, the investigators told Jason the data showed that he accessed a Yahoo! email account at 10:20, four minutes before he called 911, and visited another news website about two minutes later.

“So when we look at that, our concern is everything we are seeing here is it’s appearing you were on your phone reading political stuff at the time,” an investigator said. “People make mistakes. We’re thinking you made one.”

Ravnsborg reportedly denied using his cell phone right before the crash, claiming that he last remembers turning off the car radio and checking the speedometer before impact.