Ryan Sweatt in a Middlesex County courtroom on Tuesday, July 23, 2024, for an arraignment in a deadly crash in Hopkinton in April.
The man accused of fatally striking a woman with his car during a road rage incident in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, in April was held without bail at a hearing Tuesday.
Ryan Sweatt pleaded not guilty to all the charges brought against him during his court appearance in Middlesex Superior Court. When he was last in court, to be arraigned on a murder charge, tensions boiled over in the hallway outside -- a fight broke out between his family and that of the woman who died, Destini Decoff.
The incident occurred on April 4 on Hayden Rowe Street near Cornell's Irish Pub, Hopkinton police have said. Decoff, 26, died from her injuries two days later.
Surveillance video from the pub showed Sweatt's car driving at a group of people who jumped out of the way, then returning and hitting Decoff, "propelling her into the air and down the road approximately 60-75 feet," a prosecutor said in court.
While Sweatt told an officer at the scene that two of the people in the other vehicle had knives and were trying to confront him, that statement was inconsistent with what the video and other witnesses showed, according to the prosecutor, arguing that Sweatt be held without bail.
Sweatt's lawyer said in court that there were several versions of the story.
The magistrate judge ordered that Sweatt be held without bail but allowed him to appeal the ruling.
Sweatt is due back in court Sept. 4.
