John Jefferson
Veronica Roleen Gast (Otter Tail (Minn.) Detention Facility).
A Minnesota man driving to couple’s therapy with his now-arrested ex-girlfriend told police that after a rocky morning spent arguing at home and then announcing he wanted to break up with her while they were in the car, things really took a turn for the worst when she allegedly forced him out of the vehicle and then “floored it” in order to run him over.
Veronica Roleen Gast, 30, faces second-degree assault charges, according to a police affidavit obtained by Law&Crime on Wednesday. She is also charged with criminal vehicular operation – bodily harm, gross negligence, and domestic assault.
The Fergus Falls Police Department said Gast hit the man, who is not identified publicly, on Aug. 10 just before 1 p.m.
According to police, Gast and the man both said that they spent the morning intensely arguing and that they were in the car on the way to therapy when things hit a fever pitch. But that’s where the stories started to diverge.
Gast’s alleged victim said when he told the woman their relationship was over, she “stopped her car in the traffic lane” and then he got out of the car. Records show he told police that he had asked her to take him back home and she allegedly refused. The man told Minnesota authorities that he obliged, got out of the car and started to cross in front of it as he made his way to a sidewalk.
But as he crossed in front of the vehicle, he and Gast caught each other’s eyes, the man said.
Momentarily, he said, they locked eyes, “like you would with a bus driver” as they crossed paths in traffic. The man said she then abruptly hit the gas and “floored” it.
Gast, however, reportedly told police that she didn’t see her boyfriend in front of the car as she left.
She thought he would be on the sidewalk, she said, and things were tense and she was upset over their fighting earlier, she added.
But according to police, the woman eventually admitted that she did in fact hit the man with her car but that she did not “floor” it, per se.
“The defendant admitted that as she was pulling away, she hit the victim with her vehicle. The defendant said she slowed down and stopped to call the police. The defendant said she was in shock at hitting the victim, so she did not stop right away, but let off the gas,” a police report states.
She denied ever having locked eyes with him before striking him.
Police said the man told them when Gast hit him, he ended up turning his body away from the vehicle, which propelled him over the top of the hood. He shattered the front windshield with the force of his body, he alleged. The man told police he mostly hit the front windshield with his back and noted that he had a laceration on his right elbow.
Gast told police the crack in the windshield wasn’t from the man going through it. Rather, she claimed, he punched it. It is unclear if Gast suffered any injuries.
The couple had been dating for approximately one year and lived together, the police report said.
Gast was held at the Otter Tail Detention Facility but appears to have been released; a daily and regularly-updated public inmate list does not show her in detention as of Wednesday.
It is unclear if she has retained an attorney.
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