A Florida man charged in an Ohio crash that killed four members of a family with Livingston County ties, has filed an appeal seeking to have the charges dismissed.
29-year-old Dayren Rocubert was driving a tractor trailer that crossed over the median on I-75 in Shelby County, north of Dayton, on Christmas Eve of 2022. The truck struck two vehicles with family members traveling together for the holidays.
One of the vehicles the truck hit was driven by 32-year-old Lauren M. Hahn of Westland, with her mother, 63-year-old Kimberly A. Siegrist of Brighton, as a passenger. The other, driven by 32-year-old Jeremy D. R. Boehne of Farmington, had his wife, Karen M. Boehne, as a passenger. She was also the daughter of Siegrist and pregnant at the time of her death.
The Boehnes married earlier in 2022 and met while at Hartland High School, where Hahn also was a graduate.
Rocubert pleaded no contest on January 30, 2023 in Sidney, Ohio Municipal Court to a single count of Vehicular Homicide. In exchange for the plea, four other counts of the same were dismissed. However, on February 16, 2023 a Shelby County Grand Jury handed down an indictment against Rocubert on five counts of Aggravated Vehicular Homicide after determining a “failure to control” was attributable to him based on lab results that indicated he was under the influence of methamphetamine, cocaine and amphetamines at the time of the crash.
Rocubert then sought dismissal of the grand jury indictments arguing that he had already been charged as a result of the original fillings and thus could not be prosecuted on the felony charges as that would be a violation of his 5th Amendment rights prohibiting anyone from being prosecuted twice for the same crime, otherwise known as double jeopardy.
At a hearing on May 26, 2023 in the Common Pleas Court of Shelby County, the Sidney Law Director, David Busick, testified that at a pretrial discussion he told Rocubert’s attorney that lab reports were pending on urine samples taken the day of the crash and that the results might result in additional charges being filed. While Rocubert’s defense claims no such discussions look place and that the four dismissed charges as part of the original plea deal should not be refiled, the judge disagreed and said the defense should have specifically sought the dismissal of the four counts “with prejudice,” which would have made them permanently ineligible to be refiled. He further rejected the defense’s argument that the dismissal of the four charges of misdemeanor vehicular homicide constituted an acquittal on those charges and thus ruled the prosecution was not prohibited from bringing the new felony charges based on the facts in the original four misdemeanor charges.
“It is regrettable that the Sidney Prosecutor rushed to the taking of a plea on the municipal court charges knowing that lab results were still pending,” said Judge James F. Stevenson in his July 14th opinion. “All of this could have been avoided by merely waiting for the lab results and then making informed decisions after obtaining those results. This court finds that the prosecution in this court of the defendant for Aggravated Vehicular Assault is not barred by the negotiated plea to one count of vehicular assault in the Sidney Municipal Court. Defendant’s motion to dismiss is denied.”
In response, Rocubert’s attorney filed an appeal on July 26th to the Ohio Third District Court of Appeals seeking to overturn that decision. While a decision from that court is pending, Rocubert’s sentencing date on the count of vehicular homicide that he pleaded no contest to has been rescheduled for October 3rd.
He remains free on a $125,000 bond.
