Driver found not guilty of 4 felony DUI charges 2 years after crash kills Lowcountry TV anchor
Less than two years after he was charged with four counts of felony DUI in connection with a fatal crash that killed a news anchor from a local TV station, a Savannah man was found not guilty on all charges and freed from jail last week.
Cleveland Coleman, 33, was found not guilty Thursday in a Jasper County court. In November 2016, he charged with three counts of DUI with great bodily injury and one count of DUI causing death.
The crash that killed WTOC’s Don Logana happened on U.S. 17 just past the Georgia/South Carolina state line in Jasper County. A pickup truck, thought to be driven by Coleman, crossed the center line and was traveling south in the northbound lane, the S.C. Highway Patrol said at the time. The pickup truck collided head-on with a Mitsubishi that Logana and three other people were in.
Coleman was found to be under the influence at the time of the crash, the Highway Patrol previously said.
During last week’s trial, Coleman told jurors he doesn’t recall any details of the accident except for waking up in the hospital afterwards, according to a WTOC report. He said his last memory was being at his mother’s house with family earlier that night.
His brother testified that he let Coleman borrow his pickup truck, and Coleman said although he believes he was in the truck when the crash happened, he wasn’t driving, WTOC reported. He said he doesn’t know who the other person in the truck the night of the crash might have been.
During his testimony, Coleman admitted to driving on a suspended license on at least more than five occasions before the deadly crash, but said when his brother would lend him the truck, he’d “seek a driver who’s licensed, because (he’s) afraid to drive personally because of (his) bad driving history,” according to WTOC.
Erich Andrew Richter, of Register, Ga., who was driving the car Logana was in, was also arrested and charged with DUI months after the crash, according to a previous Island Packet article.