The South Dakota Attorney General Killed a Man. Everything Else Is a Mystery.
It’s been five months since Joe Boever was fatally struck on a remote highway, and the demand for answers is growing.
Dakota, the state’s highest-ranking law enforcement official struck
night in late summer.
In the months since, Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg hasn’t missed
a day of work—and has not faced any charge in connection with the
death of Joe Boever.
Many South Dakotans are growing restless, including Boever’s family.
Markers indicating a death went up at the crash site on Highway 14 in
Hyde County last week, a grim reminder of the tragedy that had cousin
Nick Nemec in tears.
“I’m very disappointed,” he told The Daily Beast during a video call.
“Next week will mark five months since the crash. I’ve prepared myself
mentally for some sort of guilty plea to a minor traffic violation on the
order of ‘crossing the white line.’”
Gov. Kristi Noem, like Ravnsvorg a Republican elected in 2018, has
also questioned why it is taking so long for the investigation to conclude.
“We continue to call it a great disservice to the victim’s family,” Noem
said at a Jan. 21 press conference. “I am disappointed that we haven’t
seen some action taken by the states attorney involved and hope
certainly that they soon will.”
Noem cannot remove or even suspend Ravnsborg, according to the
governor’s communications director, Ian Fury.
“Since the attorney general is a separately elected constitutional
official, she has no such authority,” Fury said.
The person who will decide what if any charges will be filed is
Emily Sovell, the Sully County state’s attorney and the Hyde
County deputy state’s attorney. Sovell is handling the case for
her father, Hyde County State’s Attorney Merlin Voorhees, who
is not involved in the investigation or the charging decision.
No reason for that has been provided. (Voorhees, who was
disbarred in 1980 for his role in a cattle feedlot scheme,
was reinstated to the bar in 1987. He has served as state’s
attorney in both Sully and Hyde counties.)
Sovell has not responded to requests for comment left
with both county attorneys’ offices and has not spoken a word
on the case publicly, even as questions about the investigation
have piled up.
Mike Deaver, a veteran public relations consultant and
strategist from Salt Lake City, has been serving as
Ravnsborg’s personal spokesman. He said the attorney
general wants the investigation to end and would prefer
more transparency.
“I would say, the attorney general shares the governor’s
sentiment and would like to see this come to a conclusion,
or at least remarks from the investigators on the time
forecast on when this might be wrapped up,” he said
In the course of her probe, Sovell has sought the
counsel of Beadle County State’s Attorney Michael
Moore and Pennington County State’s Attorney Mark
Vargo, as well as the Minnehaha County State’s Attorney’s
Office.
Moore said the prosecutor has four options in this case.
“When dealing with an automobile accident that results
in a death of another person, the law provides four
different actions of an operator of the motor vehicle,”
he said. “Negligent, careless, reckless, and intentional.
Vehicle homicide and vehicle battery require the
operator to be under the influence and also operating
the vehicle in a negligent manner.
“In order for the operator to be criminally responsible
for the death (if they are not under the influence) their
actions must be reckless or intentional,” Moore said.
“The South Dakota Legislature, I believe in 2019,
rejected a negligent homicide law, thus leaving reckless
or intentional actions as the only means of an operator
to have criminal liability.”
‘I hit something’
The 911 call Ravnsborg made after the crash was
released a month later. He mentioned his title right
away when the dispatcher answered.
“This… well… Ally, I’m the attorney general. And
I am… I don’t know… I hit something.”
Dispatcher: “You hit something?”
Caller: “By Highmore. Highmore. And it was in
the middle of the road.”
The location remains under dispute. A South Dakota
Highway Patrol report states that Ravnsborg’s car was
actually on the north shoulder when he struck Boever.
The crash site is on the west edge of town. A convenience
store is nearby, as are a gas station, a machinery business,
and a state Department of Transportation shop. All have
lights that are on all night, so the fatal crash didn’t happen
in the darkness of a prairie night.
“I’ve driven the highway in the middle of the night many
times since Joe's death,” Nemec told The Daily Beast.
“The area between two reflector posts is lit up from
your headlights bright enough to see a mouse running
across the road.”
The speed limit increases to 65 mph a few feet from
where Ravnsborg struck Boever, who was apparently
walking back to town. He had driven his pickup off
the road earlier in the evening—the cause will never
be known—and struck a large round bale in the ditch.
Boever, 55, who had worked in nursing homes and
a grocery store and as a farm hand, called his cousin
and friend Victor Nemec, who lives nearby and came
to pick him up. They left and planned to return in the
morning to repair and retrieve the truck.
A few hours later, for some reason, Boever decided
to walk to his pickup, carrying a light. As he returned,
and just a minute or two before he would have turned
off Highway 14 to walk down Iowa Avenue, Highmore’s
wide main thoroughfare, he was struck and killed.
That’s when things got weird.
After Ravnsborg called 911, Hyde County Sheriff Mike
Volek, who lives at a nearby rural address, responded.
Ravnsborg claims he didn’t know what he struck, but
the dispatcher suggested it could have been a deer.
They are common sights in the countryside, and
vehicle-on-deer crashes are regular events.
Ravnsborg, 44, said he used the flashlight app
on his cellphone but could not find the object
he had struck. His car was not drivable, with the
passenger side front and the windshield extensively
damaged.
At the crash scene, tire marks clearly showed
Ravnsborg’s car had moved sharply to the north and
come to a stop 100 feet or less from where Boever’s
body, later identified by his cousins, was discovered.
Nick Nemec, in red, and his brother, Victor, at the site where their cousin Joe Boever was struck and killed by South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg on Sept. 12.
Courtesy Tom Lawrence
It’s unclear how hard Volek, who has refused to speak to the
media, looked for the deer or whatever the attorney general
had struck.
A tow truck was called, and the driver removed the 2011 Ford
Taurus, which was Ravnsborg’s personal car.
While all this activity was underway, Boever’s body was on
the side of the road on the north shoulder, inches from the
westbound land. There it would remain for approximately
10 hours.
Was he killed immediately?
Could help have been summoned?
Those are just two of the unanswered questions surrounding
this case.
Ravsnborg had been in Redfield, a small town 70 miles
away, where he had appeared at a GOP gathering.
He was returning home to Pierre, the state capital, when he
hit Boever.
Ravnsborg said he had not consumed any alcohol that day.
The manager of Rooster’s Bar & Grill in Redfield, where the
event had been held, declined to answer this reporter in
September when asked if Ravnsborg had been served a
drink, saying it was “an open investigation.”
Volek did not give Ravnsborg a blood-alcohol test.
In fact, he loaned the attorney general, whom he knew,
his private car so he could drive home to Pierre.
Then another truly bizarre twist unfolded.
Early Sept. 13, Ravnsborg was returning the sheriff’s
car, accompanied by Tim Bormann, his chief of staff
and a former Faulk County state’s attorney, in another
vehicle.
Ravnsborg said he spotted a body on the side of the
road and alerted the sheriff.
“I discovered the body of Mr. Boever in the grass just
off the roadway,” Ravnsborg said in a statement
released Sept. 14.
“It was apparent that he was dead,” he added.
At this point, around 15 hours after the accident,
Ravnsborg did have a blood test, which showed
no sign of alcohol.
The crash was investigated by the South Dakota
Highway Patrol, which is under state Secretary of
Public Safety Craig Price’s supervision, with
assistance from other law enforcement agencies.
‘A minute either way’
Price said evidence indicates Ravnsborg was
distracted, but he has not provided details.
Was he on the phone? Was he adjusting his radio?
Why did he not see Boever, who was dressed in dark clothing?
The attorney general has a history of driving offenses,
including six speeding tickets in South Dakota and
two in Iowa between 2014 and 2018.
He also was cited for a seat belt violation and driving
without a proper muffler and exhaust system.
In all cases, he pleaded guilty and paid small fines.
Ravnsborg—a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserves
who has served 24 years in uniform—sought the
Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat in 2014.
He lost to former Gov. Mike Rounds, who was elected
to his second term in the Senate in November.
Deaver said while Ravnsborg has been through difficult
situations before, he has been deeply impacted by this.
“Absolutely, I talk to him on a very regular basis,”
he said in January. “This is tough on him personally,
and he certainly feels for the family and for the public
and wants it to be concluded.”
Nick Nemec said he fears Boever has been forgotten
in all the discussion about Ravnsborg.
“I’m afraid so. He was a mild-mannered guy and
often overlooked in life,” he said last month.
“Although I was pleased to have many people come
forward to me who said he was kind to them at his
grocery store job, and always remembered their
name and details.”
To Nemec’s mind, the fatal crash could have so
easily been avoided.
The Nemecs, both area farmers, said they just
want the truth to emerge. Nick, a former
Democratic state legislator and Public Utility
Commission candidate, has another wish.
“I will do all I can to try to ensure Jason
Ravnsborg is never elected to another public office,” he said.
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