‘It’s been a horrible time:’ Bluffton mom of 3 dies after battling crash injuries
Shannon Loper, from Bluffton, was having dinner with friends when she got a call from her oldest son.
“He said, ‘Mom, Aunt Shelly’s been in a car accident,” Loper recounted in an interview.
Loper said she rushed to the Memorial Health Medical Center in Savannah, where she found her sister, Shelly VanHorn, 50, of Bluffton, with serious injuries after a car crash.
For the next few weeks, Loper said she and their family, one other sister and two brothers, were forced to stand outside because of COVID-19 restrictions. The rules dictated that only two people were allowed inside to visit VanHorn, and it was decided that it would be two of VanHorn’s children.
Loper said the hardest part was not being able to be by her sister’s side until the end.
“It’s just weeks of a phone tree to find out what did the doctor say,” said Loper. “It’s been a horrible time.”
Over the course of two weeks, VanHorn’s conditions worsened as her family watched from afar.
Loper said, as it became clear VanHorn would not recover, the family made the impossibly difficult choice to take her off life support.
“As a family we agreed, it was not a quality of life,” said Loper. “She wouldn’t have wanted to live that way.”
Shelly VanHorn died at Memorial Health Medical Center in Savannah on June 29, according to Jasper County Coroner Martin Sauls.
‘It’s been devastating’
VanHorn grew up in Bluffton, attending H. E. McCracken Middle School and then Hilton Head High School. She was part of the school’s first class of four-year graduates.
“Shelly’s always been an extremely smart person,” Loper remembered. “Shelly was the one in honors classes. I was always the one who had to skip by.”
VanHorn graduated from the University of South Carolina with a degree in business and came back to Bluffton to settle down.
She got married, had two children, and then remarried and had a third child. They are now 25, 22, and 14. VanHorn was a stay-at-home mom since graduating, according to Loper.
She said VanHorn was her children’s biggest cheerleader: attending every school event, bragging about her youngest’s straight-A status.
Loper said members of the Bluffton community have been showing their support by donating close to $10,000 to a GoFundMe for VanHorn’s children.
The biggest blow is to their family, who she said is anchored by the group of siblings: three sisters and two brothers.
Loper said they are all extremely close and supportive, attending birthday parties for every child of the family and celebrating every holiday together.
“Shelly has always been in my life. And all of a sudden she’s gone,” she said. “Not having all five of us, it’s been devastating.”
The crash
VanHorn’s was the only car on the road on June 12 on Purrysburg Road in Hardeeville.
Her car went off the side of the road and “struck several trees” at 5:45 p.m., according to S.C. Highway Patrol Cpl. Matt Southern.
The cause of the collision is still under investigation, he said.
Loper said her sister was driving to Hardeeville to stay with their mother.
Southern said VanHorn was wearing a seatbelt, and was transported to the hospital after being entrapped in the vehicle.
Loper said it had been raining that night, and she believes that could have played a factor in the crash.
“None of us actually knows,” she said. “I think [that] is the worst part of the whole thing. We don’t know if she lost control. We don’t know if she looked down to change the radio. Nobody saw the accident.”
This story was originally published July 8, 2020 at 1:15 PM.
