Police bodycam video shows slain cyclist’s family at hit-and-run scene
October 31, 2023 - 10:35 am
Updated October 31, 2023 - 7:29 pm
Newly released Las Vegas police body camera footage shows the wife and daughter of slain cyclist Andreas Probst at the scene of an Aug. 14 hit-and-run crash, trying to get answers.
“Do we know anything about his condition at all? Please,” Crystal Probst asks a Metropolitan Police Department officer just steps away from where her husband’s mangled bike lies on the road.
“All I’m getting from FD is that it’s just just critical condition right now,” the officer says, referring to Las Vegas Fire &Rescue. “That’s all I have.” A firefighter had already told the officer Probst’s condition was “very” critical, the footage shows.
Police have said Probst was intentionally struck by two teens driving a stolen Hyundai.
A video of the crash, allegedly filmed by one of the accused teens, went viral and shows the car ramming into Probst as he rode his bike in northwest Las Vegas on Tenaya Way near Centennial Parkway.
Jesus Ayala, 18, and Jzamir Keys, 16, were both arrested and face charges in connection with what police and prosecutors say was an intentional hit-and-run death.
When the body camera footage captured Probst’s wife and daughter at the scene, it wasn’t yet known by the police officer that Probst would die. Crystal Probst says her daughter, Taylor Probst, was alerted to an “SOS” from her dad’s phone that was down, she says.
“That’s how we got here. And we got here just as the ambulance left, so we know nothing,” Crystal Probst says in the footage.
When the officer says he could get a trauma intervention specialist to come over to the scene, Crystal Probst says they’re fine, they know how to deal with this type of thing, and that her husband is a retired chief of police.
Andreas Probst retired as the police chief in Bell, California, a city in Los Angeles County, in 2009. Crystal Probst tells the officer to do whatever they can.
“Of course, no, we’re going to take care of him,” the officer says.
After being told by the officer that her husband was in critical condition, Crystal Probst says “we gotta go” and indicates she and her daughter would go to University Medical Center, where Probst was taken.
“It would be a good idea if you did,” the officer says.
When Crystal Probst asks if it was a hit-and-run, the officer says it was. He says that the entire police area command was searching for the suspects, who have been described by bystanders on the scene.
The officer also speaks to witnesses including two young women who say they saw the vehicle that hit Probst, which one of them described as a black, 2014 or 2015 Hyundai Elantra with its windshield completely shattered.
In the car, there were two young men “probably in their 20s, if that,” they said, with the driver wearing a blue ski mask and the front-seat passenger wearing a red ski mask. They both said they smelled burning rubber as the car drove off.
Another man at the scene said his car was also hit. “I got my car run into by the same vehicle,” the man says to the officer.
Ayala and Keys are also accused of filming themselves intentionally hitting a 72-year-old cyclist earlier that morning, and hitting another vehicle in addition to ramming into Probst.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Contact Brett Clarkson at bclarkson@reviewjournal.com.