A Kentucky man has been arrested nearly a year after a tire rolled off his truck and smashed through the window of car on Interstate 75, killing the 18-year-old woman driving.

Ricky Raider, 37, has been charged with leaving the scene of an accident/failure to render aid with death or serious physical injury and persistent felony offender, the Boone County Sheriff’s Office said.

Lauren Collins was pronounced dead after she was taken to a hospital following the accident at about 12:15 a.m. on July 16, 2023.  The sheriff’s office said the tire came off Raider’s 1993 Ford F-250 pickup truck, bounced over a concrete barrier separating the north- and southbound lanes of the interstate, and smashed through the windshield of Collins’ car.

Raider stopped, but only long enough to reset the tire onto his truck.

“What he did was he stole lug nuts from other wheels to secure that tire just to get it up the road and off of the interstate,” Sheriff’s Office Major Philip Ridgell  said, according to WXIX.

Raider came forward six days after the accident and told the Independence Police Department that “he lost a tire on the interstate over the past weekend but didn’t believe his tire hit anyone,” the sheriff’s office said.

But months later, investigators found evidence indicating that was a lie.

On the night Collins died, Raider called a female inmate at the Bullitt County Detention Center and told her not only that he lost a tire but that he watched it hit another vehicle and knew it at least caused an injury.

Raider appeared in court Wednesday and is due back on July 24.

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[Featured image: Ricky Raider/Boone County Sheriff’s Office]