FARGO — Just before Christmas, investigators used traffic cameras to quickly identify and arrest the driver of the car who hit and killed Robyn Krause as she walked to work at a south Fargo Walmart in the dark early morning hours of Dec. 23.
The North Dakota Highway Patrol released the driver's name, Alex Cruz, less than six hours after the crash. Cruz was formally charged with felony duty leaving the scene of an accident involving death the following day, Christmas Eve. He spent Christmas in jail, and his bail was set at $50,000. It was cut in half to $25,000 in mid-January, but he remained in custody at the Cass County Jail for 2 1/2 months until he pleaded guilty to the charge on March 12.
Despite a plea deal between prosecutors and Cruz's defense attorney that would have allowed for Cruz to serve just 75 more days in jail, Judge Connie Cleveland sentenced him to four years in prison on March 24.
Cruz, who had a history of speeding infractions and whose license had recently been suspended, maintained throughout the proceedings that he thought he'd hit a deer on that fateful morning. He expressed remorse for his actions at the sentencing.
Similar circumstances, differing timelines
The day Cruz pleaded guilty, a similar tragedy unfolded on the streets of Fargo. Again, it was dark out when 61-year-old Bernd Scholz was hit and killed at the intersection of 10th Street and NP Avenue in downtown Fargo just before 8 p.m. March 12. He'd been riding his bike but was separated from it and on the ground in the intersection right in front of a black SUV when witnesses came upon the scene.
Several witnesses said when the light for northbound traffic turned green, the SUV started to roll up over the top of Scholz's body, then rolled or backed up and drove forward again, over Scholz, with the passenger-side tires. The SUV drove away from the scene on 10th Street, and Scholz later died from his injuries.
A witness followed the SUV to a north Fargo home. She called police and told them where they could find the driver who had hit Scholz. Court records show a North Dakota Highway Patrol investigator went to the home and spoke with the driver, 42-year-old Jeremy Jorgenson of Hawley, a short time later.
During that interview, Jorgensen admitted he was at the intersection where the crash happened around the time that it happened and told the investigator that he thought he'd hit a pothole. While there is no reference to it in the Highway Patrol's report, Capt. Brian Niewind told The Forum that Jorgenson showed no signs of impairment during the interview, and the trooper left without arresting Jorgenson.
Sometime during the early morning hours the following day, Jorgenson was asked and voluntarily went to the Highway Patrol's Fargo office and allowed his SUV to be inspected, the incident report said. The SUV was seized after investigators found a disturbance in the dust on the passenger underside of the vehicle, "as if something/someone had been under the vehicle and rubbed the dust off," and material matching Scholz's backpack on the upper side of the vehicle's running board.
ADVERTISEMENT
While investigators were examining the SUV, Jorgenson told a trooper that his father had called Jeremy Jorgenson's brother, Colin, who is a Clay County sheriff's deputy, and asked him to "hop the river and check on the situation," but "Jeremy didn't speak to Colin on scene before Colin left," according to the Highway Patrol incident report.
Jeremy and Colin Jorgenson's father is Wayne Jorgenson who, according to a 2015 Facebook post from the Clay County Sheriff's Office and past Forum reporting, is a former Fargo police sergeant.
Later that day, troopers again interviewed Jeremy Jorgenson about the crash. He drew a diagram showing where he thought the pothole he hit was, and the spot he indicated was where witnesses said Scholz was lying before they saw him get run over by the SUV.
It would be more than two weeks after the crash before Jorgenson's name was made public in an updated crash release from the Highway Patrol. On Tuesday, April 1, Jorgenson was formally charged with the same crime Cruz faced — felony duty leaving the scene of an accident involving death.
The court records detailing the charges against Jorgenson included his Minnesota driving record, which showed his license had been suspended six times and he'd been convicted three times of DUI-related offenses between 2004-2008.
'Investigations take you down different paths'
In each case, it took investigators less than a few hours to identify and interview both Cruz and Jorgenson. Both men maintained they didn't know they'd hit a person.
Cruz was immediately arrested and publicly identified the day of the crash. He remained in custody throughout his adjudication.
ADVERTISEMENT
Jorgenson has not been arrested, and it took over two weeks to publicly identify him. Even after he was charged with the same crime as Cruz, a warrant was not put out for his arrest, and he is scheduled to appear at his first court hearing "off the street" on April 22.
Niewind told The Forum that, despite the identical charges and seemingly similar elements of the Cruz and Jorgenson cases, every investigation is different, and any differences in the way the two cases were handled were products of their "unique circumstances" and the way in which the investigative process played out accordingly.
"We can have very similar types of crimes, but the investigations take you down different paths. The evidence that we obtain on scene at each individual crash investigation determines the path that investigation will take," Niewind said. "Sometimes those paths are very quick if you're able to follow a lead or some very beneficial information allows us to make a quick arrest. But sometimes the information that you receive could be more encompassing and we have to rule things out, or the information is just not as readily available, and it's a little more of a struggle to determine exactly what happened."
He said that in some cases, investigators might be considering additional charges besides the single crime with which Cruz and Jorgenson were ultimately charged. Determining whether they have probable cause to bring those additional charges can also take more time.
It is not unusual for the North Dakota Highway Patrol to be the lead agency investigating fatal pedestrian hit-and-run cases, even within Fargo city limits, because the patrol has the technical expertise to do crash scene recreation and other traffic fatality expertise the Fargo Police Department does not have, according to both Niewind and a Fargo Police Department spokesperson.
Niewind referred questions about Jorgenson's custody status to the Cass County State's Attorney's Office. The Forum asked Casey Moen, the assistant Cass County State's Attorney prosecuting the case, why Jorgenson was not arrested, and he declined to comment.
Jorgenson has retained Fargo defense attorney Mark Friese of Vogel Law Firm to represent him.
ADVERTISEMENT
Cruz is currently an inmate at the state penitentiary with an expected release date of April 28, 2028.
The Trust Project
