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For the Record: Ravnsborg Clicked 7 Links on iPhone in 4 Minutes Right Before Killing Joe Boever

The SDHP investigation report on Jason Ravnsborg’s killing of Joe Boever includes South Dakota Highway Patrol Trooper John Berndt’s affidavit in support of the request for a search warrant on Apple Inc. Trooper Berndt was seeking the court’s permission to search Ravnsborg’s Apple account records based on information found on the iPhone Ravnsborg had with him at the time of the crash.

Special Agent Cassidy Halseth of the North Dakota Bureau of Investigation had already searched Ravnsborg’s iPhone XR A1984 and LG LM-Q720AM cell phones. Special Agent Halseth found that Ravnsborg placed his 911 call on the iPhone at 22:24:22 CDT on September 12, 2020. On that iPhone, SA Halseth found Ravnsborg had accessed seven distinct URLs between 22:17:25 and 22:21:45, a four-minute span before the crash. The last URL was clicked two minutes and 37 seconds before Ravnsborg hit Send on the 911 call. The last URL plays an intro video that lasts one minute and 30 seconds; below that, the webpage accessed offers an embedded video that runs 41 minutes and 19 seconds.

We know from the videos released last February of North Dakota law enforcement’s interview of Ravnsborg that the Attorney General was checking his email and surfing the Web immediately before he struck and killed Joe Boever. But here’s the exact inventory of Ravnsborg’s phone-noodling in the minutes before he called 911 from the shoulder of Highway 14 west of Highmore at 22:24 CDT on September 12, 2020:

SDHP Trooper John Berndt, Affidavit in Support of Request for Search Warrant, 2020.10.01.
SDHP Trooper John Berndt, Affidavit in Support of Request for Search Warrant, 2020.10.01.

8 Comments

  1. larry kurtz 2022-04-01 07:53

    As a salaried employee of the State of South Dakota how is an elected official not always on the clock? Sheriff Mike Volek was working, right?

  2. mike from iowa 2022-04-01 08:49

    Is there a crime heinous enough to get magats to prosecute one of their own? Seriously. What is it gonna take for them to prosecute their own? South Duhkotans that keep voting for these scum are seriously impaired and do not deserve to voite.

  3. Bonnie B Fairbank 2022-04-01 09:21

    mike from iowa: Nope. Not a one. Most the South Duhkotens I know make virtues of every form of nastiness.

  4. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2022-04-01 09:22

    Larry, I get the feeling Volek hadn’t been really working at his job for years.

  5. Mark Anderson 2022-04-01 12:35

    You know Cory, under your banner of Dakota Free Press you are going to have to add, don’t read while driving.

  6. Cory Allen Heidelberger Post author | 2022-04-01 13:13

    Yeah, Mark, maybe blogs need Attorney General Warning labels: “The Attorney General has proven that reading this blog while driving can cause death but not impeachment.”

  7. Arlo Blundt 2022-04-01 14:02

    Well…Cory, it is obvious that the late Sheriff Volek had quickly shifted gears from conducting an accident investigation to assisting a Pooh Bah from Pierre who was in a bit of a jam. He went from law enforcement officer to “public servant ” in a nano second and never looked back. He really didn’t want to know what the Attorney General had done on that dark highway, he just wanted to get him down the road.

  8. DaveFN 2022-04-03 20:44

    “He’s driving so far on the shoulder he’s almost going to the ditch, when he strikes Mr. Boever,” Trooper John Berndt of the South Dakota Highway Patrol told the committee in January. “To say you never saw the person and the face came through your windshield? I’m sorry, that’s a distraction.”

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