If there was an award for grotesque optics in a politically related incident, this would take it, hands down. South Dakota State Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was returning home Saturday night from a MAGA event he attended, where a Trump 45 hand gun was being raffled off. He reported that he had “hit a deer” on the highway, and the body of 55-year-old Joe Boever was later found.
Here’s the background story from the Argus Leader:
Victor Nemec knew something was wrong when he went to pick up his cousin Joe Boever Sunday morning at his home in Highmore.
The two had planned to go fix Boever’s truck, which had been damaged when Boever hit a hay bale in the ditch the night prior. Victor said his cousin had told him he went off the road while reaching for his tobacco. But when Nemec arrived, Boever’s house was unlocked with all the lights on.
His cousin was nowhere to be found. Concerned, Nemec called the Hyde County Sheriff.
Twelve hours later, he and his brother Nick Nemec were in a Highmore funeral home identifying Boever’s body.
Boever, 55, was killed in an accident late Saturday involving South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg.
Twenty-two hours elapsed between the time the accident was reported and the time that the body was identified. Ravnsborg said that he had not been drinking. Bloomberg reports that Ravnsborg is “known to have an occasional drink, but has made it a practice not to drink at the Lincoln Day events,” which he attends frequently, all around the state.
Whether he drinks or not, he does speed while driving, and has received six speeding tickets in six years. He’s also been cited for not wearing a seat belt, and for operating a vehicle without a proper exhaust and muffler system. It looks like he can add vehicular homocide to his rap sheet.
Whether or not he imbibed at Rooster’s Bar & Grill, where the MAGA event was held, I’m sure he participated in the raffle for the MAGA prize of the night. After all, it was a fundraiser.
The deceased’s cousins saw an accident being investigated Sunday where Boever had left his truck and they called 911 to ask if their missing cousin was involved. They were told to wait to hear back from authorities. Cousin Nick Nemec said, “I don’t know if cousin Joe was laying on the highway for 22 hours or if they had bagged him up before that.” The bigger question is whether Ravnsborg knew he had hit a man and not a deer and tried to cover it up.That would account for the delay.
MAGAts are swell people, but then you knew that.
Wow. I will wait for the full details to be released, before saying what I am thinking.
I’m thinking that Ravnsborg knew damned well that wasn’t a deer that he hit.
U knw it wouldn’t be prudent 2 b drunk & call the popo with a dead body lying nearby.
That’s only one of my questions – who reported the accident and when?
That depends. If you’re black or white.
Of course he knew.
I saw a short news blurb about this this morning and have been waiting for details. This is more than I knew before but like you while my mind is jumping to a particular conclusion we don’t know enough yet. Having lived my first 26 years in a town/area where deer vs. car collisions resulted in multiple deaths most years and plenty of serious injuries (not to mention totalled cars) I know how such things often go, although one’s chances are much better if driving a truck. The question is just what was the impact point. Even a sober and fairly careful driver can get distracted momentarily and if a deer was running across the road at just the right time and it results in a glancing blow at the front corner it’s not unreasonable in many places to assume one hit a deer. However, if the impact point is more fully on the front of a vehicle, even a truck then any driver will know damn well what they hit. And will probably stop, if only to check out their front end and see if it’s safe to drive home.
Lots of questions need to be answered. But I hope folks dig and dig deep on this.
I wonder if the Atty General took care to wipe the blood off his vehicle before calling to report hitting a deer.
There’d be damage to the front end – and he’d have a hard time cleaning the blood and stuff out of all the bits.
More than “hard” – pretty well impossible, even for a stone cold sober person.
I have hit two deer at night in my life and I knew they were deer both times. Of course he may have hit a deer and someone else hit the man. If he cleaned up his truck ( you know the jerk was driving an F150 or something) we may never know and I doubt they will investigate this at all. I have no faith in cops anywhere on this earth.
hi
Your spamming ass has just been bojoed. If there was a magic spell to do away with spammers, believe me, I would be convening a coven nightly to get rid of you.
Nice, good job, Ursula!
I hate, loathe and despise spammers. I’m having a love affair with Republicans compared to how I feel about spammers!
Whoa, girl, that’s pretty intense 🙂
????????
OK crappy driver with a history of speeding was driving a Ford Taurus. ND State Bureau of Investigation will be taking over the Investigation since the South Dakota SBI is under the jurisdiction of – guess who??!. The cousin was quoted as telling ABC news that there seemed to be a lot of “foot dragging and lack of investigating going on”. No surprise there.
I would be surprised if he was driving sober. I’ve lived in small towns and when people drive roads that aren’t frequented that much, they drink. Naturally, by the time everything got reported, there was no way he would have showed up with alcohol in his blood. This is a weird case. As I said, any way you look at it, the optics are not good.
True, but there’s a bigger storm in D.C. It’s hard to see the little outrages when the traitor in chief blinds everyone with his cruelty, depravity, & stupidity.
Are MAGAts really that stupid?
No, not about the hit-and-run, I’m looking at the “event” ad. Take a look at the ticket prices. “$50 in advance; $30 at the door.”
Unless there’s some special incentive for higher advance ticket prices, the price structure is usually the other way around–a discount for buying in advance and a higher price for waiting till you get there. (The only time I can think that there’d be a cheaper door price is if the advance sales failed to meet expectations and the venue just has to fill the seats but, even then, that’s on the folks hosting the event rather than the owners of the venue.)
maybe the advanced tickets were the only ones that got raffle tickets.
Homocide? So Boever was gay? I knew Repubs were anti-LGBTU, but…a dedicated effort?
I almost hit some moron dressed in dark clothes and nothing even resembling a light reflecting object anywhere on him on a old deserted highway. He was even was riding a bike with no reflection. That being said it is your personal responsibility to be aware at all times of what’s on the road. And for this guy that’s a top law enforcement officer for his community to so blatantly ignore this rule is en-excusable. We must hold our government officials to a higher standard or you get a trump clown running things.
Are you seriously expecting a member of the “Party of Personal Responsibility” to take personal responsibility? For anything?
Do you think he might have been drinking ? and speeding . I’ve hit a deer before , and you know when you hit one, it usually lands on your hood !