The trial began Wednesday in Anchorage for a man facing felony charges in a fatal Unalaska car crash case.
Dustin Ruckman is charged with two counts of criminally negligent homicide for his involvement in the 2019 crash on Mount Ballyhoo. He was 18 at the time of the incident and was driving the truck that eventually plummeted about 900 feet down the side of the cliff.
Ruckman sustained minor injuries, according to police, but two teenage girls were thrown from the truck and died in the fall: Kiara Rentaria Haist, 18, and Karly McDonald, 16.
Superior Court Judge Thomas Matthews, along with lawyers representing the state and the defense, were on Unalaska Island earlier this month. They failed to find enough unbiased local jurors, and the trial was moved to Anchorage where jury selection began on Monday.
Now, over the next couple of weeks, a pool of jurors will hear testimony and evidence to ultimately decide if Ruckman is guilty of the charges.
KUCB’s Sofia Stuart-Rasi sat down with reporter Maggie Nelson to hear more about what has happened with this case over nearly six years.
SOFIA STUART-RASI: So you’ve been covering this case for several years. Seems like a lot has happened during that time. Maybe you could start from the beginning — what do we know about this incident and what happened up on Ballyhoo that day?
MAGGIE NELSON: So in early May of 2019 three highschoolers drove up Mount Ballyhoo — Kiara R. Haist, Karly McDonald and Dustin Ruckman. You can’t drive up there anymore, but at the time you could access the top with a vehicle.
It’s not clear exactly what happened, but the truck fell off the side of the mountain — the Ulakta Head Cliff side — that faces north, toward the Bering Sea. Dustin, the driver, wasn't injured, but the two girls were inside the truck when it fell. They died in the crash. McDonald was 16 and Haist was 18.
It was an enormous blow to the community. You know, everyone is affected when someone dies – it’s a small island. But when it’s kids, teens dying in such a horrific way, you know, it just stunned the community.
So, with help from FBI officials, local police did toxicology tests, collected all kinds of physical evidence as well as interviews from friends and family. Drugs and alcohol weren’t alleged to be involved. The FBI’s involvement was one of the original reasons the case took some extra time.
The case was eventually handed over to the state, who originally indicted Ruckman on two counts of manslaughter, two counts of criminally negligent homicide, and one count of reckless driving. Ruckman pleaded not guilty to those charges. That was in June of 2020.
STUART-RASI: And that is really just the beginning – right? I mean, this case still has yet to go to trial … and there’s been some bumps, so to speak, along the way…
NELSON: Oh yeah. So you know this happened about a year before the COVID-19 pandemic slowed things down significantly. Hearings were reset or vacated during that time. On top of that, Ruckman’s original lawyer was undergoing some pretty serious cancer treatment. Really not much major progress was made until 2022.
Eventually, a trial date was set for the late summer of 2023. But this was kind of the first of several false starts. As jury selection neared, the previous judge (Herman Walker Jr.) recused himself from the case. Ruckman got a new lawyer who was a longtime friend of that judge. So that created some more delays as the new defense lawyer caught up with the case, and the current judge — Thomas Matthews — took over. Things kind of get squared away and a new trial date is back on the schedule – set for summer of 2024.
STUART-RASI: OK, so it’s been like five years at that point, since the incident, but a trial is set to happen — things are moving…
NELSON: Well, yeah. So it would seem, but this is where things really start to unravel.
As they are preparing to start jury selection, the state prosecutor told the court that the local police department had found a drawer of materials that hadn’t been submitted. A lot of the material was just duplicates, but the court needed time to look over everything and make sure there wasn’t anything new that could affect the case.
Jury selection gets pushed back again. But as the date is approaching, it gets postponed because the court agrees to dismiss the charges against Ruckman. His defense argues that the state’s former expert testimony exceeded the scope of his expertise. And the state eventually agreed to dismiss the charges.
But it doesn’t end there. The case is sent back to a grand jury – and Ruckman is reindicted. This time with fewer charges. They’re all dropped except for the counts of criminally negligent homicide — so now he is just facing two Class B felony charges.
The trial is being live-streamed through the Alaska Court System.
Copyright 2025 KUAC