A.G. Gancarski
Gov. Ron DeSantis says officers on the scene during Harjinder Singh’s alleged illegal U-turn that led to triple homicide charges this weekend didn’t know he did anything worthy of arrest, even though the motorists who allegedly collided with him died on impact.
DeSantis believes the Highway Patrol deputies who responded to the scene were right to get Singh’s “information” and “clear the road” and to defer the arrest of the driver allegedly responsible for the most infamous Turnpike turnaround in Florida history.
“The witnesses were dead. So he had three witnesses that were dead, killed in the crash. You have Singh, and then his passenger, neither of whom spoke English. So you have a crash scene, it wasn’t obvious to the troopers at the time that there was a criminal offense that had been committed,” he said Tuesday in Tampa at the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority at SkyCenter One.
“If you had someone that had survived, then, you know, you may have been able to get probable cause at the scene; as it is, the witnesses were dead. And so the troopers had to rely on getting the video,” DeSantis added.
Ultimately, he says it was “fine” because the state was able to complete the “extradition” from California, but that didn’t come without a significant taxpayer investment for a charter flight for Lt. Gov. Jay Collins to travel to and from the Golden State for the historically unprecedented spectacle of completing the collar himself (with the assistance of State Troopers who in every other circumstance would do the job without the LG’s involvement).
DeSantis also disparaged an ongoing petition drive appealing to him for leniency in Singh’s case, saying the people signing on aren’t even Americans.
“There’s a bunch of people, like, in foreign countries that are signing a thing to say, basically, you know, go lenient on him. Like, you know, he didn’t intend, you know, to kill these folks. I was like, well, he intended to get behind the wheel, knowing that he didn’t have the full capacity to be able to handle that vehicle. He was driving it around, knowing that he was not well-situated to do that. He attempted a very reckless U-turn with a massive truck, knowing how very dangerous that is,” DeSantis said.
The Governor continued to speculate on the suspect’s alleged motivations.
“The notion that somehow this guy wasn’t really at fault … almost portraying him as like a victim of what happened here. You know, I don’t buy that. This guy knew what he was doing. And did he intend to do a clean U-turn and not run into anybody, or have anyone run into him? Yeah, that was probably the intent, but the reality is it was a reckless disregard for the safety of others to do what he did,” DeSantis added.
