‘He looks deceased.’ 911 audio provides new details in fatal Bluffton accident

The driver who struck and killed a man on Buckwalter Parkway on Jan. 16 was the fifth and last caller to report the accident to authorities.

Calls to 911 from the witness, the driver and several others who drove past the scene reveal new details in the incident that killed Charmaine Warthern, a longtime manager at the Bonefish Grill on Hilton Head.

The incident happened around 10 p.m., according to a Bluffton Police Department report. The first 911 call came in 22 seconds later from the witness, Dempsey Parrish.

Parrish sounds distressed and, at times, slurs his words. He tells dispatch he and his friend were walking about half a mile from McDonald’s on Buckwalter Parkway when “somebody just hit him and left.”

The second call, from a passerby, came in at 10:02 p.m. As she drives along the parkway, the woman tells dispatch she can see a body in the road and that some cars were turning around to check.

The third call, from another passerby, came in less than a minute after the second. The man says, “There’s a man down in the middle of the road.” He says the friend of the man (Parrish) couldn’t tell him anything ... but says he was asking for an ambulance.

The fourth call comes from another passerby at 10:03 p.m. He tells dispatch the man in the road is on his stomach.

“They just turned him over. ... Ma’am he looks deceased,” the caller says, sounding distressed. “I cannot look at that. Oh my God. Oh my God.”

The driver calls about 30 seconds later.

“I just hit somebody right on 278 coming from McDonald’s,” the driver said, sounding panicked. “They were walking right in the middle of the road, and I hit them.”

The driver said she stopped at the scene and put her hazard lights on and asked if the person was OK. Then another man shouted at her to “back up the car” before running toward the car and trying to get in. She left the scene and went home.

“I just don’t want the person to be hurt,” the driver told dispatch.

No further details on Warthern’s death were available Tuesday because the autopsy report is not yet complete, according to the Beaufort County coroner’s office.

A paramedic at the scene said Warthern’s injuries were not survivable, according to the police report. He was pronounced dead by the Beaufort County coroner at 10:10 p.m. It’s unclear if he was deceased when first responders arrived.

The driver’s 2013 Ford Fusion had “significant” damage to the passenger side front bumper, windshield and the “A” pillar, which holds the windshield in place, according to the report.

The driver was not charged for leaving the scene because of S.C. statute 56-5-1210, the Bluffton Police Department said previously. The statute says a driver involved in an accident that results in injury or death may “temporarily leave the scene to report the accident to the proper authorities.”

Bluffton Police Department spokesperson Joy Nelson said Friday the department will no longer discuss the case until the investigation is complete, although she previously answered questions about it.

Nelson said Tuesday the investigation is ongoing and that it will likely be a few weeks until it is finished. The department is still declining to answer questions, she said.

The department issued a formal denial of a Freedom of Information Act request by The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette for the police body cam footage from the incident.

The newspapers were also told no accident reconstruction sketch was created during the investigation by the Bluffton Collision Reconstruction Unit.

This story was originally published January 23, 2018 at 1:46 PM with the headline "‘He looks deceased.’ 911 audio provides new details in fatal Bluffton accident."