I don’t like the way mosquitoes taste and I’m not sure how to kill cheese.
2 Likes
That and like, as someone who enjoys driving on rural roads late at night, I like to think that I could tell the difference between a deer and a person. I can’t imagine that the victim here was darting out right in front of the car like a deer might and even then there’s a significant size and fur difference.
4 Likes
NOT ALL OF US DID!!!
14 Likes
I don’t believe you. You could’ve helped yourself.
6 Likes
which would be why he apparently called the cops and waited until they arrived.
Why not? One explanantion not requiring collusion might be that when the attorney general phones to report something he gets a bit more attention than Joe Schmoe does. Is that right? No. Is it necessarily a sign of sinister intent? No.
According to Ravnsborg’s statement to the media, the sheriff drove himself home and then lent his personal vehicle to Ravnsborg.
We drove a short distance from the scene to his home, I borrowed his vehicle and arrived back in Pierre just before midnight.
No one has claimed the sheriff did any looking (at least so far). Ravnsborg’s statement says he called 911 to report the accident, then he looked with his phone flashlight (which seems reasonable - which ‘normal’ person carries a flashlight with them these days?), then the sheriff arrived, filled out some paperwork and gave him an “I hit a deer” tag" which is apparently a thing and they all toddled off to the sheriff’s house, etc. No mention that the sheriff did any looking.
Except no, not really. What he says is:
So he’s just returning the sheriff’s car and using the same road. Assuming that’s the main route, that doesn’t seem unreasonable.
Does any of this mean the story is true? Could it still be a coverup giving the AG a night to sleep off whatever alcohol he might have consumed at the previous night’s event? Sure.
But it is at least a plausible story in the sense that it is internally consistent and no part of it stetches the bounds of credibilty unduly (leaving due room for doubt regarding the claims of sobriety and questions about speeding/driving without due care and attention).
And the alternatives do all get a bit Fargo. Either the AG and the sheriff were fine with leaving the corpse by the roadside all night where anyone might find it (which wouldn’t hurt their story any really but would you have the mental strength to see that at midnight after killing a guy with your car?) or they hid the body somewhere over night only to replace it the next morning, thereby greatly increasing the risk that any investigation finds something amiss with the forensics.
Or you just go with local big shot calls police thinking he hit a deer, sheriff pops out to do the big shot a favour by taking care of the paperwork and giving him a lift home. Next morning the AG drives past the scene, thinks he’ll have another look for that deer (might as well get some venison or some antlers out of having his car totalled) and finds a dead guy.
There is clearly a great 80’s whacky hijinx comedy to made out of the story or equally a gritty 90’s style conspiracy thriller or even a “I know what you did last summer” style horror movie but Occam’s razor would suggest that no conspiracy is needed to explain what can be put down to complacency and cronyism.
4 Likes
I’m stealing this reply from The Root:
Isn’t this the beginning of Bonfire of the Vanities? Except, improbably, somehow shittier and more racist.
6 Likes
The problem is that probably humans taste delicious. At least according to several now extinct Caribbean tribes.
2 Likes
Yep. he could easily have 10 to 15 percent more face in that head. Head/face size compared to height is an important quotient in the visibility and popularity of certain people. Tom Cruise is the baseline of this algorithm.
1 Like
It does sound like a plausible scenario. I’d be curious to hear the 911 call, assuming it doesn’t mysteriously vanish.
1 Like
His statement: 'Because it was dark and I didn’t have a flashlight, I used my cell phone flashlight to survey the ditch but couldn’t see anything. When Sheriff Volek arrived at the scene he asked me if I was o.k. and surveyed the damage at the scene and to my vehicle."
The AG said he specifically looked at the ditch where the victim was easily spotted the next day. The sheriff surveyed the damage at the scene. This is a very generic statement with zero detail. We can assume that the AG’s statement may not include every single detail, but I find it odd that the sheriff wouldn’t have looked in the ditch to verify that the AG actually hit an animal and not something else.
Returning the vehicle and passing the location where the accident occurred doesn’t seem unreasonable. What is odd is that they actually stopped to look for a deer. Do people in South Dakota actually go back to find their roadkill? I grew up in rural CA and drove there for close to 15 years I never heard of anyone doing that.
This statement was crafted by an attorney who left out some details but added others. He specifically mentions that he had no alcohol, but adds "my vehicle struck something that I believed to be a large animal (likely a deer). I didn’t see what I hit and stopped my vehicle immediately to investigate.
He probably was not drunk (that was a specific statement), but I would guess that he was busy texting. If you’re driving in the rural dark and looking ahead there is no way anyone wouldn’t have seen what they were hitting. (Note: I saw a poor bunny rabbit who jumped in front of my friend’s car in the dark Death Valley night.)
3 Likes
I think you’re right that most of it is quite plausible. But not all of it rings quite true, and the fact that a man is dead and the person who killed him (and the only witness) is the one telling us the story that doesn’t ring true is a problem.
As @subextraordinaire correctly points out, going back to the scene of an accident to look for roadkill doesn’t really make a lot of sense. If he truly thought he hit a deer, and he truly looked but couldn’t find any deer that night, what possible reason would he have to revisit the scene of the accident, with another person no less, to just look around?
Also, I am not quite sure about the story that Ravnsborg and the sheriff looked for a deer but didn’t spot the body. The physics of a 200 lb mammal getting hit by a car are not exactly new to a rural sheriff, so I don’t quite understand how he would have missed the body if he was actually looking for something that had been hit by a car.
3 Likes
Fair enough. I don’t but there’s clearly room for the contrary view.
Again, I don’t see it as particularly odd but fair enough.
Well, that is true but really adds nothing. Any statement is crafted in the sense that someone decides what to put in and what to leave out. Beyond saying that we can presume that being an attorney, this guy will have carefully chosen what to put in and leave out, it doesn’t really take us anywhere.
Assuming that to be the case what I would find difficult to fit into my theory of conspiracy and wrongdoing is “what would be the point?”.
The only reason I can see for the posited collusion between AG and cop to delay the time of finding the body would be to allow time for whatever illegal susbstance the AG had ingested to disperse.
Now if you want to posit that he hadn’t drunk anything but had been busy doing coke or whatever is the currently chic drug of choice among the rural rich that would fit your textual analysis.
Agreed. It does seem odd. But then odd things happen all the time. So of course do acts of colluson between cops and people in authority so… 
3 Likes
I’m not positing anything about drugs; I hadn’t even thought about that. He assumes he hit a deer but admits he didn’t see what he hit. This means he wasn’t paying attention while driving, which could mean he was texting, checking his radio, or sleepy.
4 Likes
And for my money that is quite likely the case. I’m prepared to believe the whole “thought I’d hit a deer, found the dead guy next morning” thing, if only because it’s so bizarre.
I mentioned the drugs as a possible explanation for why one might want to avoid being tested for anything until significantly later.
Hitting a guy because you were texting or fell asleep doesn’t get any better just because you wait several hours to admit it. Hitting a guy because you were off your head on e’s and whizz does.
1 Like
He was also leaving a fundraiser that was at a bar. I’ve attached a screenshot of the ad for the event because it’s insane.
2 Likes
I wonder if the sheriff dept had his front end cleaned off while they had his car. And of course how did the sheriff not look for a body if he was at the scene?
Is that real? If so it’s possibly the single most US American thing I’ve ever seen.
2 Likes
It seems to be that any Get-Out-of-Jail-Free bothersider value left in this one is just about tapped out, don’t you think?
I mean, that 51 year old incident has been used to excuse at least:
- This dude
- Trump, about 15 different ways
- Pallidino
- the dude who body-slammed a reporter
- the rich drunk kid with affluenza
- Vitter
- Jordan
and that’s just off the top of my head.
So, for you “Remember Chappaquiddick” dittoheads: I want a conversion ratio. Tell me, how many Republican sins are worth one Democratic sin?
Of course, we know the answer is they won’t stop until people stop taking them seriously, because it is all bad faith to begin with.
3 Likes
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
