GUILTY-Boulder County Jury Finds Yeva Smilianska Guilty of Vehicular Homicide-Reckless Driving

Boulder, Colorado-  After a week long trial, late Friday evening, a Boulder County jury found Yeva Smilianska guilty of Vehicular Homicide-Reckless Driving in the death of Magnus White. 

The jury, who began deliberations shortly after 3pm came back after 7 hours with the verdict.  

They reached a unanimous decision on this charge instead of the lesser charge of careless driving resulting in death.  Sentencing has been scheduled for June 13, at 10am in Boulder County. 

Moments after the Verdict, Michael and Jill White, parents of Magnus, stepped out into a snowy night and spoke to the media in reference to the toll that this has taken  on their family.  

“I think what’s hardest for me as his mom, is knowing that in sixth grade he wanted to be a professional cyclist — that on July 29th, 2023 — it was going to be his second-to-last training ride before he went on to the world championships in Scotland to race for the U.S.,” said Jill White, holding back tears. “It was one of his dreams to finally be selected for the USA National Team for mountain biking. He was on his way to get that dream that he saw for himself in sixth grade.”

She said she believed the jury’s decision was “the right verdict.”

“This conviction is a small step forward for accountability. Whatever sentence this driver receives is not enough. It’ll be somewhere between two and six years,” said White. “She may never spend time, a single day in prison. This verdict acknowledges what we have known all along. Magnus’ death was not an accident, it was a crime.”

Opening Statements of the trial began on Monday morning in the long awaited and delayed trial, which saw closing arguments on this (Friday) afternoon. 

“Her behavior, her conduct, was reckless,” a prosecutor said. “We have reckless behavior, we have reckless driving… She consciously disregarded the substantial risk to get behind the wheel that day.”

“We confessed from the very beginning — this is a case about being tired,” the defense argued. “Being tired is not reckless driving” and added that they his client had never denied causing the accident, but it was careless, not reckless.  

In rebuttal, the district attorney was quick to point out that was not true in that “for over 5 months, even when Ms. Smilianska came to his office with her attorney, she still claimed that it was the car malfunction that caused her to swerve off the road, and it was not her fault.  It was only after a vehicle investigation proved that wrong, did she change her story.”

In addition, during rebuttal, the district attorney stressed that Smilianska had laid out a warning for herself and not listened to it, through actions and texts.  

“Don’t take my words for it,” he said, and then quoted Smilianska’s text to Cooper about 20 minutes before the crash. “Take her words for it: ‘I’m falling asleep.”

The trial is over, but the story is far from over.  There will be the sentencing, and also a civil case.  But even after that, the damage that this has caused for the White Family and friends, and the entire cycling community as a whole will remain. 

In coming weeks, we will be following up on this story, and different aspects and views of the case and the messages that it sends.