Left: Dylan Robert Simmons (via Washington County (Minn.) Attorney’s Office). Right: Darisha Bailey Vath (via GoFundMe).
A 20-year-old man is accused of killing a 17-year-old girl after intentionally plowing his car into a group of people during a fight at a Minnesota park and running her over.
Dylan Robert Simmons was fighting with Darisha Bailey Vath and others at Lakeside Veteran’s Memorial Park in Lake Forest in the very early hours of the morning on Sunday, according to a criminal complaint reviewed by Law&Crime. Witnesses told police that there are been “arguments and physical fights involving two groups of individuals, all or most of whom knew one another,” the complaint says. Officers were told that people “on both sides were shouting at the other.”
Multiple participants were also armed with weapons including a baseball bat, hammers, a crowbar, and a folding knife, according to the complaint.
After the fight appeared to have deescalated, Simmons and another participant in the fight — Vath’s ex-boyfriend, according to her parents — got into a car, with Simmons behind the wheel, the complaint says. He then “intentionally drove in the direction of several people from the opposing side of the conflict,” colliding with the back end of a vehicle in which five people from the other side of the fight had arrived.
Simmons then allegedly backed the car up and “drove directly towards the multiple people who were near the other vehicle.”
This time, the complaint says, Simmons struck Vath with the front passenger side of his car.
He didn’t stop.
Simmons “drove over her with both the front and rear passenger side tires of his vehicle,” the complaint says. Witness cellphone video shows the incident occurring, as well as Simmons fleeing the scene in his car.
Police were called to the scene at around 1:22 a.m. They found a group of bystanders surrounding Vath as she lay on the ground, and one person was performing chest compressions on the girl. Police and EMS also provided emergency medical care, but they were unable to revive her, and Vath died at the scene, according to the complaint.
Simmons was eventually convinced to return to the scene by a police officer, who was talking to a witness at the same time the passenger in Simmons’ car happened to call that witness on the phone.
After he returned to the scene, Simmons allegedly “admitted that he was driving the vehicle at all materials [sic] times.”
The criminal complaint notes that several of the witnesses who spoke to police “were on the same side of the conflict as Simmons.”
Simmons has been charged with third-degree murder and criminal vehicular homicide with leaving the scene, according to the criminal complaint. The murder charge carries a potential 25-year prison sentence, while the vehicular homicide charge has a maximum possible sentence of 10 years behind bars.
Jail records show that Simmons was arrested early Sunday morning and taken into custody. He has not posted bail, which a judge set at $750,000.
Police say that Simmons and Vath “were known to each other,” but didn’t elaborate beyond that in a statement posted to Facebook.
Minnesota CBS affiliate WCCO reported that Vath’s parents said that the passenger in Simmons’ car was their daughter’s ex-boyfriend.
“I’ll never see her again,” Vath’s mother Sarah Vath told WCCO. “Never hold her. Never be able to tell her I love her. They took my baby.”
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