Update, Sept. 21, 2023 at 9:51 AM:
The two Las Vegas teenagers who intentionally struck and killed a retired police chief with a stolen car have been identified.
Jesus Ayala, 17, who is Hispanic, was identified as the driver of the stolen Hyundai Elantra that struck Andreas Probst, a former police chief in Bell, California.
Probst, 64, was mowed down while riding a bicycle in the bike lane around 6 a.m. on August 14.
His daughter, Taylor, found him on the side of the road. He later died at a nearby hospital.
Cell phone footage of the hit-and-run was recorded by the car’s passenger, identified as Jzamir Keys, 16, who is Black.
“Ready?” Ayala asked Keys in the horrific video. “Yeah, yeah, yeah, hit his ass,” Keys said as Ayala veered into the bike lane and slammed into Probst.
“Damn, that n*gga got knocked out!” Keys said.
?Teens in Las Vegas stole a car, committed a hit and run, and fatally struck 64-year-old cyclist Andreas Probst for fun. pic.twitter.com/WV3ituHkLT
— WooPapa17 (@WooPaPa17) September 16, 2023
Police say both teens went on a mini crime spree on August 14. Keys is believed to be the driver of a vehicle that ran over a 72-year-old man on a bicycle in the early hours of Aug. 14. The man was not hurt.
Ayala and Keys also rammed another vehicle and stole four cars before killing Probst, police say.
Ayala was arrested the same day as the deadly hit-and-run. Keys was arrested on Tuesday, Sept. 19, after a month on the run.
They are charged with murder with a deadly weapon, battery, and attempted murder. They are being held in jail without bond. A judge ruled Wednesday that they will be tried as adults.
“I don’t know why he did this,” Ayala’s mother told KLAS. “I don’t know if God can forgive this.”
However, Keys’ mother defended him in a text message to a reporter.
“My son’s side of the story will be told, ‘the truth,’ not the inaccuracies the media will try to portray,” the unidentified mother told KLAS via text message.
Keys had two family members in attendance at his hearing in Family Court on Wednesday. Both relatives cried during the hearing, the NY Post reported.
According to 8 News Now, Keys was in the child welfare system at age 8.
A Family Court judge ordered Ayala and Keys to be transferred from a juvenile detention center to the Clark County Detention Center where adult criminals are housed.
News of Probst’s death was slow to make headlines. His death was initially ruled an accident.
Police upgraded his death to a homicide after the video went viral weeks later.
Twitter/X users were outraged by a headline in the Las Vegas Review-Journal that referred to Probst’s death as a “bike crash,” rather than an intentional homicide.
As the backlash grew, editors at the Las Vegas Review-Journal changed the headline from “bike crash” to “hit-and-run,” while noting that the reporter, Sabrina Schnur, wrote multiple stories about Probst’s death.
“The social media outrage machine has never had it so wrong,” Review-Journal Executive Editor Glenn Cook wrote on Sunday.
Cook said the public didn’t notice the headline was wrong until the video went viral a month later.
“Sabrina is a hero,” Cook said. “Not only has she led coverage of this important story, she connected a source who had access to the now-viral video to law enforcement. The murder charge against the suspect in Mr. Probst’s killing followed quickly thereafter.”
