Pre-Trial Fingerpointing Does Not Help Davis Hit-And-Run Driver’s Case
After Davis police identified his vehicle in his driveway as having damage consistent with a December 17 hit-and-run crash in Davis, the alleged driver blamed several other people for the wreckage, according to documents filed in Yolo Superior Court.
But it was the driver himself, Brian Douglas Cassidy, who matched the description provided by the alleged victim, Nikolas Kostelny. After Cassidy refused to help him and fled the scene of the crash, Kostelny was forced to get help for a broken arm by himself.
The injury collision happened at the corner of Chiles Road and La Vida
Cassidy, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges of hit-and-run, drunken driving causing injury and driving with a suspended license. A preliminary hearing had been scheduled in the case on February 17, but that was postponed so as to enable Cassidy’s recently retained attorney, Dustin Gordon, to get up to speed.
In addition to his detailed description of the alleged hit-and-run driver, Kostelny also had given Davis police information as to the color, make and possible model of the car that knocked him off his motorcycle—a blue Jeep sport-utility vehicle that would have a damaged front end and air bags that had been deployed. Investigating officer Sergeant Rod Rifredi encountered just such a vehicle in the Rancho Yolo mobile home park in East Davis. The Sergeant contacted Cassidy, according to court documents, who explained the damage by saying, “I loaned it to my daughter’s boyfriend and when he returned (it) the damage was there.” During the December 29 conversation, Cassidy also said it had been “months” since the vehicle was driven. Subsequently he shortened that time to a couple of weeks.
“At this point, I had noted that Cassidy had given me several different versions of what had occurred with the vehicle,” Rifredi wrote. “His daughter had it and returned it with the damage, (then) his daughter’s boyfriend did that.” Cassidy also included his estranged wife in his widening web of conflicting stories, saying he had been with her the night the collision with Kostelny occurred. However, she told police she is currently divorcing Cassidy and that nobody except him had driven the tellingly damaged Jeep since the fall of 2014.
Cassidy remains lodged in the Yolo County Jail in lieu of $155,000 bail.
