Caught with a damaged vehicle in his driveway, the suspect in a Davis hit-and-run collision blamed his daughter and her boyfriend for the wreckage when confronted by police, according to documents on file in Yolo Superior Court.
But it was Brian Douglas Cassidy who matched the description provided by his alleged victim, 21-year-old Nikolas Kostelny, who was forced to seek help for a broken right arm on his own after Cassidy reportedly fled the scene of the Dec. 17 crash.
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 scheduled for Tuesday was postponed to allow his newly retained private attorney, Dustin Gordon, to get up to speed on the case.
That hearing, now set for March 25, is expected to reveal information contained in the affidavit for Cassidy’s arrest warrant, a copy of which was obtained this week by The Enterprise.
In addition to a detailed suspect description, Kostelny also provided Davis police with the color, make and possible model of the car that hit him — a blue Jeep sport-utility vehicle that would have front-end damage and deployed air bags after drifting into the oncoming lane and hitting Kostelny’s motorcycle.
Officers checked area auto-body repair shops without success. So Sgt. Rod Rifredi continued the investigation the old-fashioned way: by driving possible routes from the Chiles Road collision scene, where the Jeep was last spotted heading westbound.
One path took Rifredi over the Pole Line Road overcrossing into East Davis. He hung a right into Rancho Yolo and cruised the circular roads that comprise the mobile home community.
It was on Outer Circle that Rifredi found what he was looking for: a blue Jeep SUV with significant damage to its right passenger side and material hanging from the windows that, upon further investigation, were “airbags that had been deployed and appeared to have been cut off,” according to the six-page affidavit.
Rifredi also noted “copious amounts of mud on the right front fender and hood area,” consistent with Kostelny’s recollection that the Jeep made a sharp left turn into a field that was wet and muddy from recent rainfall.
The sergeant reported making contact with Cassidy, who, when asked about the damaged Jeep, said “I loaned it to my daughter’s boyfriend and when he returned (it) the damage was there,” the affidavit says of the Dec. 29 conversation. Cassidy also said it had been “months” since the vehicle was driven, but later pared that time frame down 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 brought his estranged wife into the mix, claiming he was with her — the Jeep’s registered owner — on the night of the crash, though she told police she is divorcing Cassidy and neither she nor anyone else in the family besides him had driven the vehicle since last fall, the affidavit says.
“I pointed out to him the various discrepancies in his explanations about the vehicle. I further explained I could tell he was being deceitful by his body language as he spoke,” Rifredi wrote. “Cassidy responded that it was OK because he knows how this works. He stated he had been in and out of jail a lot of times and he had nothing further to talk to me about.”
Davis police impounded the Jeep, which according to the affidavit had dried blood on the inside of the driver’s door. Cassidy was arrested on the felony warrant on Jan. 29.
Gordon, Cassidy’s attorney, declined to comment Tuesday about the contents of the affidavit. Cassidy remains in Yolo County Jail custody in lieu of $155,000 bail.
— Reach Lauren Keene at lkeene@davisenterprise.net or 530-747-8048. Follow her on Twitter at @laurenkeene