Chris Soules has been keeping a low-profile since he was arrested for leaving the scene of a fatal accident last month, but the Bachelor alum was spotted out in public for the first time on Wednesday, May 17.
The reality TV star posed for a selfie with an employee at an O’Reilly auto parts store in Oelwein, Iowa, who posted the photo on Instagram. “My sweet customer today,” Ashley Overton captioned the pic, which shows the 35-year-old farmer with a beard and wearing a gray baseball cap and hoodie.
Overton later explained in a comment on the post that if she’d known Soules was in hiding, “I would have never posted his picture,” adding, “I am so sorry, Chris.”
After getting some backlash for sharing the pic, Overton posted a Facebook video on Saturday, May 20, saying she was praying for his family and the family of Kenneth Mosher, who was killed in the April 24 accident after Soules’ pickup truck allegedly rear-ended the tractor Mosher, 66, was driving and both cars ended up in a ditch in rural Iowa.
“This is a kind-hearted man,” Overton said in the video. “He is a farmer. I was able to let him know that I pray for him and that meant a lot to me, because I just wanted to tell him that and I got the opportunity finally.”
As Us Weekly previously reported, Soules — who appeared on season 19 of The Bachelor in 2015 — was arrested at his home hours after the car crash and charged with leaving the scene of a fatal accident, which is a class D felony.
Soules’ attorneys filed a motion on May 1 to dismiss the felony charge, which was denied, and the corn farmer entered a not guilty plea earlier this week.
He is set to appear at a pretrial conference on July 11, with the actual jury trial beginning on July 19.
