ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – Nearly seven years after two teenage girls were killed in a cliff crash on Unalaska’s Mount Ballyhoo, their families are back in court after a mistrial left the case unresolved.
A new jury trial for 24-year-old Dustin Ruckman is scheduled to begin this week in Anchorage, with a pretrial conference held Tuesday and jury selection scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday.
He is charged with two counts of criminally negligent homicide in the deaths of 16-year-old Karly McDonald and 18-year-old Kiara Renteria Haist.
Prosecutors say Ruckman was behind the wheel in May 2019 when his pickup left a road on Mount Ballyhoo and fell an estimated 900 feet down a cliff. Ruckman told authorities he was thrown from the vehicle as it descended, while McDonald and Haist remained inside and were killed…