Tire came off man’s truck, causing crash that left a KY teen dead. Why he is now jailed.
A Cincinnati man whose truck lost a tire, causing an 18-year-old to crash on Interstate 75 in Northern Kentucky last summer, has been indicted after police say they later learned he knew about the collision but drove away.
Lauren Collins, an 18-year-old University of Kentucky student from Independence, was driving southbound on I-75 in Boone County when a tire from a northbound pickup truck crossed the concrete barrier and hit her windshield, according to a news release from the Boone County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff’s deputies were called to the scene at 12:15 a.m. July 16. Collins later died at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
While police initially did not know who the driver of the pickup was, the sheriff’s office said Ricky A. Raider, 37, notified the Independence Police Department July 22 that he was the driver. Raider allegedly told police at the time that he had lost a tire on the interstate the previous weekend, “but didn’t believe his tire had hit anyone.”
However, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said investigators later learned that Raider talked to an inmate at the Bullitt County Detention Center on the same day the crash happened, telling the woman he talked to in a recorded phone call that he saw the tire hit Collins’ vehicle “and knew that the collision likely resulted in someone being hurt or killed.”
“After the collision, his tire rested near the concrete barrier that divides northbound and southbound I-75,” the news release states. Raider allegedly remounted the tire on his truck and left.
He was indicted June 4 by a Boone County grand jury on one felony count of leaving the scene of an accident/failure to render aid with death or serious physical injury. He also was indicted on a charge of first-degree persistent felony offender.
He was being held in the Boone County Detention Center on $40,000 cash bond. He was arrested June 11, according to the jail website.
