AMES, IOWA – An Iowa State University campus bus driver accused of running down a student who died as a result has pleaded guilty in the case and has been jailed and fined.
After an investigation in the weeks following the December 14, 2015 tragedy, Ames police arrested the driver of a CyRide bus in the hit and run accident that claimed the life of ISU student Emmalee Jacobs, age 18 of Urbana. She was discovered by a university police officer at 7:04 AM that December morning, injured and lying in the road at Lincoln Way and Ash Avenue. She later passed away at Mary Greeley Medical Center.
Ames police say Ms. Jacobs was struck by a campus bus as she was in the crosswalk of Ash Avenue. The bus driver was identified as Benjamin Clague, age 23, of Gilbert. He was eventually charged with leaving the scene of an injury accident resulting in a death, a class D felony, and failure to obey a traffic control device.
After his arrest on January 20, Clague posted bond and was released from jail. Ames police executed a search warrant upon him on February 4. He then entered a not guilty plea on February 15. Later, however, he pleaded guilty to a charge of failure to report an injury accident. He was sentenced to 30 days in jail and ordered to pay $11,293.60 in fines and court costs.
Too bad someone doesn’t run Peter over with a bus.
Censoring schmucks. Scared of truth? You are all pathetic. Turn in your citizenship cards. You have no right calling yourselves Americans.
I thought Matt restored them. What’s up?
She could have lived had this POS stopped and called for help. This guy deserves murder charge. The criminal justice system is beyond repair. It needs complete scrapping, and starting over. Hold on people, my Public Access TV show is almost ready. The Revolution will begin.
The criminal justice system can’t make any money by actually punishing criminals. They’d rather jail non violent drug offenders (mainly marijuana users) and tax them heavily through fines, court costs, surcharges and “law enforcement initiatives ($125 extra). sad when you can receive more prison time for a plant than you can for killing someone and leaving the scene.
Maybe this guy used the Hillary defense and just claimed he was ignorant of the law so nothing should happen to him.
Good point James. I subscribe to the “measurable harm” theory of law, where actual real harm has to take place before the criminal justice system can be invoked to seek remedy, extract fines, or exact punishment. The system is severely outdated and biased based towards theological thought forms, and corrupted racist incentives. For example, marijuana was prohibited as a tool to oust Southwest Mexican Indians, and later blacks,poor whites and hispanics. Also ties to corporate oil as industrial hemp threatened Standard Oil and Rockefellers etc. Christian ministers and Bible Thumpers are also part of the reason why automobile killers get less punishment than possessing a simple plant. Measurable harm logic would dictate that killing a human being and fleeing the scene should garner years if not decades in prison, while walking around stoned shouldn’t even be an offense.
But what they are looking for is obedience, labor, tax money, and systematic compliance / conformity, which is similar to obedience. “Drugs” or activities which promote independent thought forms are discouraged and prohibited, while activities / behaviors that encourage the aforementioned items are encouraged and promoted. As long as this bus driver wasn’t a “drug” user, was employed, and generally believed in the United States Corporate Military Industrial Complex (without them detecting he had a thread of insubordination in him) he was good to go in the Court’s eyes. Meanwhile, a non-conformist unemployed pot smoking anarchist would have served 20 years in prison for the same crime. That’s how it rolls.
And in the same vein, this is how and why the POLICE are able to get away with blatantly killing unarmed, unthreatening citizens. The system FAVORS and PROTECTS itself. When Judges make their decisions, what they truly are looking for is signs in your past of non-compliance….a stretch of unemployment…a crime of moral turpitude (including smoking marijuana), insubordination in school or work settings etc. These are the factors which truly determine who ends up with what when it comes to sentencing. Never mind that you literally just ended someone’s life and completely upended the deceased person’s surviving family…(hey shit happens right?). If you in good faith were participating in the American La La Land, fully immersed and believing in TV programs presented to you on Mainstream Corporate Channels….the Judge will deem you worthy of a 2nd and perhaps 3rd chance. And trust me, you WON’T be able to trick that Judge because he’ll know whether you sit in church and listen properly / attentively. It’s their job to sniff out disobedience to The USS GOD of DOLLAR.