Meister will remain free after posting $5,000 bail last week. His lawyer, Daryl Jensen, argued that the bail money should be returned and Meister should not be subject to the Dane County Bail Monitoring Program because he turned himself in after hearing about the crash in the media and because he has a very limited criminal record and steady work history.

O’Connell said, however, that even after hearing about the crash, Meister went on with his workday for a landscaping firm and went out to a job site, and that it was “false” to say he turned himself in.

Meister was also fired from his job at Glacier Landscaping, O’Connell said, likely because of evidence discovered indicating he may have been stealing equipment from the company. O’Connell said charges related to those allegations are “likely.”

According to the complaint:

A witness who was about 150 yards behind Meister’s truck said she saw the truck being driven in the middle of Lincoln Road in the town of Oregon, and saw it strike what appeared to be a flock of birds. She said she then saw a bicycle wheel rolling down the road away from where the truck had been.

The woman said she stopped and found Berel in the ditch. She immediately called 911. Berel died at the scene.