A late night rebuttal from St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, Wednesday, after outcry from community leaders and city officials. Gardner is under fire, after a teenage volleyball player lost her legs in a reckless driving crash. The suspect violated terms of bond 50 plus times.
Gardner is facing calls to resign. In a statement, the Circuit Attorney lays out several times she says her office made an effort to lock up the suspect.
The statement refutes the court's claim that her office didn't do anything when the suspect violated his gps monitoring 50 plus times on a prior robbery charge. Gardner says in December 2021, prosecutors did ask for a bond revocation and judge Bryan Hettenbach said no. She says Judge Hettenbach is the one who decided -- two separate times -- that bond conditions would be gps monitoring.
Courtesy St. Louis Circuit Attorney
The courts won't release records which would confirm that account because it's from a closed case -- the first case that was dismissed when the circuit attorney wasn't ready. Gardner's statement doesn't address an important point: why her office claimed it had given up the robbery charges because the victim had died, when the victim's dad has been on television saying his son is very much alive.
Janae Edmonson, the 16-year-old from Tennessee, was rushed to the hospital over the weekend after a speeding car hit her as she was crossing the street downtown. Her dad reportedly had to use his belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. The suspect, 21-year-old Daniel Riley, was already out on bond related to pending robbery and armed criminal action charges from 2020 — and he had repeatedly violated the conditions of his release and his GPS home monitoring more than 50 times.
In a statement earlier this week, judges are denied any responsibility for the failure of the system to lock Riley up. The Circuit Court said that Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner failed to file a motion to revoke Daniel Riley's bond, and that judges cannot act on their own as an advocate for any side in a case -- even when they are aware of the bond violations.
