Report: Teen driver held in Vegas bicyclist hit-and-run killing case expected ‘slap on the wrist’
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A teenager accused of intentionally driving a stolen vehicle into a bicyclist in Las Vegas, killing him, told a police officer after his arrest that he expected he would be out of custody in 30 days because he was a juvenile.
“It’s just ah ... hit-and-run,” the teen said after the Aug. 14 crash, according to a police arrest report released Monday. “Slap on the wrist.”
The admission was recorded on the officer’s body-worn camera, police said, after investigators located a stolen Hyundai allegedly used in the apparently intentional crash that killed bicyclist Andreas “Andy” Probst.
Probst, 64, was a retired police chief from the Los Angeles-area city of Bell.
The vehicle had “major front-end damage and a broken windshield ... consistent with an automobile versus pedestrian collision,” the police report said, and “fresh blood on the windshield.” The car was found abandoned with the engine running on a busy thoroughfare in northwest Las Vegas.
Police said they later chased two people who ran from another wrecked car and arrested one of them, the alleged driver, who was 17 at the time. He is now 18. He was later identified by a witness as the person who was behind the wheel of the vehicle that struck Probst, according to the report.
His alleged 16-year-old accomplice was arrested Sept. 19 after cellphone video he allegedly shot of the vehicle striking Probst became public. Police said they seized that teenager’s cellphone and located the saved video of the crash.
Both teens appeared separately in courts Tuesday as adults on charges including murder, attempted murder and battery with a deadly weapon. Judges told them they will remain jailed without bail pending preliminary hearings of evidence.
David Westbrook, a public defender representing the older defendant, and Dan Hill, newly hired attorney for the 16-year-old, each declined to comment about the case outside court.
Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters that prosecutors will seek to consolidate the cases for trial. He would not say if the case would be presented to a grand jury. Indictments against the teens would make preliminary hearings moot.
Under Nevada law, the teens cannot face the death penalty. If they are convicted in adult court of murder committed before they were 18, the most severe sentence they can receive is 20 years to life in state prison.
Police and prosecutors said the teenagers initially struck a 72-year-old bicyclist with a stolen Kia Soul and drove away. They later allegedly crashed a black Hyundai into a Toyota Corolla and again drove away before striking Probst. The bicyclist in the first incident suffered a knee injury but was not hospitalized, police said.
The video, shot from the front passenger seat, recorded the teens talking and laughing as the stolen Hyundai steers toward Probst and hits his bicycle from behind. Probst’s body slams onto the hood and windshield. A final image shows the bicyclist on the ground next to the curb.
Police announced on Aug. 29 that they became aware of the video circulating at a high school and were searching for the person who recorded it.
In the days after the video emerged, the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper and a reporter who covered Probst’s death endured vicious attacks online for a story in which the reporter interviewed the retired chief’s family. The original headline: “Retired police chief killed in bike crash remembered for laugh, love of coffee.”
Review-Journal Editor Glenn Cook said Tuesday that what he had characterized as a “firehose of hatred” based on claims that before the video surfaced the newspaper downplayed the killing of a retired law enforcement official has since dissipated.
“I think the mob has moved on,” Cook said.