Jeremy Fugleberg Profile picture
Editor, @TheVaultFCC | Editor @diplocourier | Alum: @SDState @AUC @UK_Patterson @iblp | Very strong hotdog opinions

Sep 18, 2020, 17 tweets

My dispatch from the side of U.S. Highway 14, where South Dakota's attorney general struck and killed a man with his car last week. inforum.com/news/governmen…

Here are more photos from the Ravnsborg-Boever crash scene. Let's walk through it, in the direction of travel. These images are as I shot them yesterday. Here's the presumed start of the scene. Notice the green spray paint line on the road, to the left of the speed limit sign.

Off almost immediately to the right (north) is a SD DOT shop. This is where a vehicle that looked like Ravnsborg's wrecked 2011 Ford Taurus was towed on Tuesday.

Now here's Highway 14, looking west. Take a look. The road is slightly rising, but it's straight. Big shoulders. You can't see them well, but those are rumble strips on the right side of the white-painted fog line. That's the border of the "legally drivable" part of the highway.

To follow along on Google Maps, here's the overhead sat view of this stretch of road. Building complex on the north side of the road is the DOT shop (one building not built yet). If you need to find this another way, search Highmore, SD. Just a bit west. google.com/maps/@44.52752…

Walking further west, just past that triangle "no passing" sign is a painted white square on the shoulder border with the grass, next to a squirt of pink spray paint. This used to contain a traffic cone, said Nick Nemec (cousin of the victim). Not sure what this means.

Continuing west, there's a t-shape of green paint, then this: a spot of paint with a curved line leading west. It's on the shoulder, just before skid marks start. Nick Nemec suspects this is where his cousin was walking when he was hit by Ravnsborg's car.

Here's the low-angle view from that spot of paint, looking west on Highway 14. You can see the skid marks in the distance, marked in green paint - the right tire mark well off the white line and the left tire mark about midway in the lane.

Here are the start of the clearly definable skid marks. First looking west, then down from the first dot (right tire) and the T marking the left tire skid.

A bit further west, not far from the start of the first clear skid mark, there's a green line by the grass. Unsure of meaning. But Victor Nemec (also cousin of the victim) found what he thinks is a piece of Ravnsborg's car there, in the grass (abt where Nick Nemec is pointing)

Evidence and a story: Here, skid marks continue, veering further off the road, with the paint dot intervals getting shorter. Also: DOT guy in the photo came and gave us all reflective vests because he was worried for our safety with all the traffic whizzing by. We put them on.

Here we're looking back east behind us (direction car was coming FROM), with Nick Nemec looking at the track of the skid marks across the shoulder.

Again moving west, the skid of the right tire is now well across the middle of the shoulder. There's what appears to be scuff or stain mark just inside the right tire here. The you see a T-shaped paint park up ahead, what appears to be the end of the skid mark.

Just past the t-shaped line, there doesn't appear to be skid marks, but there is this wide streak of stained asphalt, about 9-11 feet or so. Nick Nemec believes this his cousin's blood, stained into the ground as his body was dragged or slung across the shoulder due to inertia.

The Nemecs believe this is where their cousin finally landed. A spot in the grass about 2 feet off the shoulder pavement. There was discolored grass here, and earlier in the week, lots of flies.
(Why two photos with vests and 1 not: we started and ended up back at this spot)

That's the walk-through. Happy to answer any questions as best as I can as a layman who visited the scene in person.

Oh - to clear up some confusion I've heard elsewhere, name pronunciations:
- Ravnsborg: pronounced "ROUNDS-berg"
- Boever: pronounced "BEE-ver" (like the animal)

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