Mom of Missouri hit-and-run victim: ‘An explanation and an apology would be fantastic’ | Opinion
Erica Kush and Jason Showalter still don’t understand why the young man responsible for the death of their 15-year-old son, Gavin Kush, in a 2018 hit-and-run was not prosecuted for leaving the scene of a fatal accident, which is a felony punishable up to seven years in this state.
The driver, Tyler Bonabhan, was 24 and on probation on drug charges at the time of the accident, so it’s strange that his probation wasn’t revoked. Court records show no evidence that a drug test was ever done, though they do show that a sergeant with the Missouri State Highway Patrol’s drug and crime control division interviewed Bonabhan.
According to the highway patrol’s crash reconstruction report, Bonabhan didn’t stop even after Gavin, who’d been walking along the edge of a country road with a buddy, bounced off of his windshield. After impact, the report said, the car “traveled off the right side of the roadway … before eventually traveling back onto the road and leaving the scene.” Bonabhan thought he’d hit a deer, he told police the next day, after initially claiming that he hadn’t been driving at all.
You’d have thought that he’d have stopped anyway, if only to check the damage to his girlfriend’s maroon Hyundai Elantra, which had to have been hard to drive with a broken windshield, and was later declared a total loss.
He did pull over “eventually” to look at the car, he told police, and “adamantly advised he was unaware he had struck a person, and was shocked to discover two pedestrians had been struck. He stated he left the scene because he was in shock.”
I’m in shock that this unlikely version of events, backed up only by his girlfriend, who would only know what he told her if as she says she wasn’t there, was never presented to a jury.
Mom already dressed for trial that wasn’t happening
Erica Kush says she had already dressed for court on the morning that she’d been told Bonabhan was to go on trial. That, she says, is when Cass County Prosecuting Attorney Ben Butler finally got around to calling her to say that the charges were being dropped “due to lack of evidence. He said it would be a waste of the jurors’ time.”
Her attorney, Dan Matula, says Butler told him the charges were “dismissed for new evidence. And I said, ‘What new evidence?’ and he said, ‘I’m not going to get into that.’ He slammed the door in our face.”
Butler did return my message, but said he couldn’t speak to me about the case.
Of course it’s possible that he did offer Gavin’s mother more of an explanation than she in her grief could take in. But if that’s what happened, it’s still not too late to clear up any misunderstanding.
And as for lack of evidence, Bonabhan had already agreed that he was driving and responsible when he settled a wrongful death suit for $200,000 in 2019. “Gavin’s DNA was on the car for God’s sake!” his mother said. No question about that: The highway patrol’s report says, “Division of Drug and Crime Control personnel observed apparent blood and clothing fiber evidence embedded within the shattered portion of the front windshield.”
“We had waited for this trial for two years” after he was charged, Erica said. “He took somebody’s life and fled the scene.” Her somebody, and Jason’s.
So there she was, she says, on Sept. 1, 2021, the morning of the trial that didn’t happen, all dressed up in her black slacks, gray cardigan and mauve blouse, hearing only then that Butler wasn’t going forward with the case after all. He had met with her several times before that day, she said, and had on those occasions convinced her that he was committed to the case and that investigators were making progress. Now, though, she thinks he was playing her all along. I can’t imagine why he’d do that, but also don’t know why anyone would let a grieving mother wake up thinking this was the day she’d get at least a shot at justice for her son.
“To be honest,” she said, “I probably had a few choice words” for him when he told her there would be no trial. Court records show that the case had been dropped 11 days earlier, on Aug. 20.
There are some things, of course, that police and prosecutors might like to do but cannot, like give grieving parents their child back, or even provide that nebulous thing we call closure. But expecting Butler to fully explain his thinking does not seem more than he might have managed. Or could even now.
The original police report blames Gavin and his friend for walking in the road at twilight in dark clothing. But even if the accident could not have been avoided — and I’m skeptical about how Bonabhan could have mistaken two teenagers for one deer — how does that change that he took off, and thus broke the law?
You do have to know that you hit someone to be held accountable, but the driver’s story defies belief. And if he somehow really did think the 15-year-old who bounced off his windshield was an animal, why was that?
‘I don’t remember seeing any brake lights’
When the case was dropped, “it was like it never happened, like his life never mattered. Like he never lived at all,” Erica told me, weeping along with Gavin’s father at Jason’s kitchen table, not a quarter of a mile from where Gavin and his friend Ronnie Doll had been walking before Bonabhan hit them, grazing the one and killing the other.
He did live and did matter, so I’m here to say how tired I am of hearing from victims and their families that they were never told what happened to their case or to their loved one. Why are they so often left needlessly and endlessly wondering?
He did live, and I don’t see why Butler can’t try again to explain to Gavin’s parents why this wasn’t a case he felt he could win. That they still don’t know the answer naturally makes them think there must be some not-so-upright reason behind the decision.
He did matter, and was Ronnie Doll’s best friend. Physically, all that happened to Ronnie just before dusk on July 22, 2018, is that his right shoe was somehow pulled off his foot by the car’s bumper. By the time he looked up, the car that then hit Gavin full on was already speeding away.
But inside, Ronnie said he still hasn’t recovered. “It was weird making friends after that,” he told me. “It was a fear of, if I’m going to be hanging out with someone, is something bad going to happen to them, too? I still feel like that.”
He and Gavin, he said, each had one earbud in as they walked, so they could “talk and listen to Metallica and still watch for cars.” They were almost back to Gavin’s dad’s place when Bonabhan’s car nicked him, as he was nearer the middle of the road, and then plowed into Gavin, who was on the lip of the ditch.
“It was a little bit after the golden hour,” Ronnie said, but they had not yet lost the light. “It was at that cusp.” When “this red, maroonish vehicle pops over the hill,” they turned to face the car, put their hands out in front of them to get it to stop, and then jumped in opposite directions.
“We started to move out of the way, and the next thing I knew my shoe had been taken off. I looked over and Gavin had stopped doing rotations and came to a rest” in the ditch. “I saw him hit the ground and roll and I tried talking to him. I got a blink out of him, but I don’t know if it was a response.”
And the car? “It kept going; it didn’t even stop. I don’t remember seeing any brake lights.” Another driver passing by soon did stop, and called 911. And until the ambulance came, Ronnie said, he kept trying to reassure his friend. “I was talking to him, telling him we’d be playing video games again.”
‘I thought it was a big issue’
A little over an hour later, according to a report from the highway patrol, he was pronounced dead at Cass County Regional Hospital. “That night I ended up giving a police report,” Ronnie said, “and I thought it was going to court. I thought it was a big issue, and justice was needed for Gavin’s family.”
I thought that, too, Ronnie, which is why I’m asking you to tell us about the young man they lost. And why I’m still hoping Ben Butler will try again to explain his thinking to Gavin’s parents.
Gavin “was a really cool guy,” Ronnie said, and the first to have made him feel welcome when he moved to Drexel in the eighth grade. “He was a bigger person, and most people saw him as just the chubby kid. But he was a really caring person, always wanting to make people laugh, and wanting to look out for other people.”
He so enjoyed helping his grandparents on their ranch that he’d joined the Future Farmers of America. He was also a talented sketch artist and loved playing baseball, but was so gentle that he quit the football team. “He hated smashing people,” his mom said, and “would do anything for anybody.”
Because Gavin was bullied at times, his dad offered to teach him to defend himself, but Jason said he didn’t want to learn. “He was like, ‘Dad, I don’t want to hurt nobody.’ ’’
As it happens, Jason’s older son, Christopher Moles, had died in a car accident 10 years earlier, also near Jason’s place, and when Christopher too was 15. Whoever said that thing about how we’re never given more pain than we can bear was a fool. “The holidays are the hardest time,” Jason said when we met, right after Christmas. But whoever could ease that pain, even a little, and for whatever reason does not, is worse than a fool.
When the editorial board wrote about this case last year, my colleague Dave Helling got this emailed response from Butler: “Bonabhan was charged with Leaving the Scene of an Accident. After his arrest, the investigation continued. The charge was dismissed when the evidence no longer supported probable cause.” Which could mean anything.
Neither Tyler Bonabhan nor his mother, Rebecka Bonabhan, with whom he’d spent the day of the accident, answered my messages.
But Joey Testerman, a drywall installer who for a time after the accident lived with Tyler’s mother, told me in an interview that he felt bad for 29-year-old Tyler. “He’s kind of messed up about it now, and doesn’t want to talk about it. When I lived with his mom, we had two dogs that died and he couldn’t handle death.”
If Tyler Bonabhan has a conscience, it has to weigh on him that he never made any amends. But the charges really can’t be refiled at this point, because we’re beyond the three-year statute of limitations for every crime but homicide and rape.
And since he is no longer in any legal jeopardy, he could sit down with Gavin’s family and apologize. Just like Ben Butler could still explain why the charges were dropped.
“An explanation and an apology would be fantastic,” Erica said.
Gavin Kush did live, and that’s the very least that those who so keenly feel his absence deserve.
