Police drop off Bluffton man at hotel before he died in hit-and-run. Family wants answers
Not long after a rookie Bluffton police officer dropped off Andrew “Andy” LeMaster at a hotel next to U.S. 278 last week, the 40-year-old Bluffton resident walked into the highway and was killed by a hit-and-run driver.
A family member of LeMaster said she is not satisfied with answers from the Bluffton Police Department about why an officer dropped off a heavily intoxicated man, with no ID or means to pay for a room, she alleges, at a hotel instead of taking him to jail or a hospital, where he could be monitored.
“They should never have left him in that condition on a highway hotel,” said Lora Knoppel, LeMaster’s aunt, in an interview. “And don’t even take him in to make sure he gets a hotel room. They don’t even do that.”
Knoppel alleged the department was negligent and caused her nephew’s death. She believes he was trying to walk home when he was killed and said it makes no sense why the officers dropped him off at a hotel he had no connection to.
Reporters sent a list of questions to the Bluffton Police Department about what happened in the March 21 hit-and-run. In an email Monday, the department defended its conduct, saying that dropping LeMaster off was the last course of option with jail, a hospital or a family member to pick him up all unavailable.
“There was no negligence on the part of the officers. That allegation made by [LeMaster’s] family member is denied,” said Terry Finger, Bluffton’s town attorney.
“Bringing him to [a] safe place was the first priority and the only option which was the most applicable,” he wrote.
Finger said the department is neither considering disciplinary action for the officers involved nor believes any is warranted. He said Bluffton police are cooperating with the S.C. Highway Patrol, the agency investigating the hit-and-run.
“The hit-and-run death of Mr. LeMaster is tragic. The focus is to find the driver of the car” that hit him, Finger said.
Knoppel said she puts the blame on Bluffton police, who put him in that situation.
“They killed him. Not the person that hit him on the highway,” Knoppel said, “They did it.”
What we know
LeMaster is a father to five children, three of whom live in Bluffton, according to his aunt. He died at around 8:40 p.m. on March 21, according to Beaufort County Coroner David Ott.
He was struck by an unknown car while walking on U.S. 278 near Okatie Center Boulevard, according to the Highway Patrol. A Highway Patrol map shows the hit-and-run took place just a short walk from the Hampton Inn & Suites Bluffton-Sun City, which is on U.S. 278.
Bluffton Police Officer Brian Nelson, who graduated from the police academy less than six months ago, had dropped him off there after being called around an hour earlier to a domestic disturbance at a home in Mill Creek in Cypress Ridge.
At around 7:20 p.m., police arrived to find LeMaster trying to get into his neighbor’s house two doors down, thinking it was the home his children share with their mother, according to a Bluffton Police Department report released Monday evening. The houses look very similar to one another, police and a neighbor have confirmed.
“Neighbors indicated to officers that they believed LeMaster had no malicious intent and did not wish to pursue charges,” said Finger, the town attorney. That took charging LeMaster and taking him to jail off the table, according to Finger.
A neighbor told police that night they believed LeMaster might have been drinking or “suffering from some mental” disorder, according to the report. Neighbors could smell alcohol on him, the report said. A bottle of Fireball, a brand of cinnamon-flavored whiskey, was found near the door after LeMaster left his neighbor’s home.
But when Officer Nelson asked LeMaster whether he had been drinking alcohol, he responded “no,” the report said.
There “was not enough evidence to charge LeMaster with public disorderly conduct for being grossly intoxicated in public,” according to Finger.
To LeMaster’s neighbor, Kimberly Handley, it should have been obvious to police officers that LeMaster was not in a state to be left to his own devices.
“I said, ‘Sir, he can’t even stand up!’” Handley said she told a Bluffton police officer when LeMaster was being given a ride.
For at least two-and-a-half years, Handley had been his neighbor on Blakers Boulevard directly across the street.
“This is the most intoxicated I’ve ever seen him,” she said in an interview with the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Handley said he had fallen over twice in his intoxicated state in front of Bluffton police officers. LeMaster was too drunk to tell what home was his own, she said.
Finger, however, said Bluffton officers interpreted that “his status didn’t warrant medical attention.”
Coroner Ott said information on LeMaster’s blood alcohol content is still being analyzed.
Why take him to a hotel?
Knoppel, LeMaster’s aunt, said it was not the first time her nephew was having trouble at home.
The Blakers Boulevard home was where LeMaster lived and took care of his three children with his girlfriend, according to Knoppel. As of late, LeMaster had been having issues with the girlfriend and would come back to the home intoxicated, only to find his girlfriend wouldn’t let him inside and called the police, according to Knoppel.
Usually when this happens, LeMaster would contact his aunt to come pick him up, she said.
“Always, I was the person he came to. I was the one to pick him up. I can’t understand it unless he was so out of it,” Knoppel said. “Why didn’t I get a call? Why didn’t I get a text?”
His girlfriend told Bluffton police, according to Finger, that he didn’t usually live at the home
“The girlfriend informed officers that LeMaster stayed occasionally but that he did not live at the house and that he was not welcome at that time,” Finger wrote. She downplayed to police how much LeMaster lived there, something his aunt challenges and said had to do with their fraught relationship.
Finger wrote that attempts by LeMaster and LeMaster’s girlfriend to reach someone to pick him up were “unsuccessful.”
Officers told LeMaster he could not stay at the home on Blakers Boulevard and he needed somewhere to go, according to the report.
“LeMaster was asked where we could give him a ride to, to which he responded, ‘I don’t know,’” Officer Nelson wrote in the report.
“After LeMaster could not offer a location, officers suggested a hotel for the night and LeMaster replied ‘Thank you,’” the report said.
Officer Nelson drove him to the Hampton Inn & Suites, a hotel outside of Bluffton’s jurisdiction. He pulled up to the hotel, let LeMaster out and watched him walk up to the lobby before driving away, the report said.
“He didn’t even have an ID to get a hotel [room], much less cash,” Knoppel alleged. “He doesn’t have a credit card. He didn’t have any means to pay for a hotel [room].”
According to Finger, LeMaster told officers he had money.
A front desk clerk at the Hampton Inn & Suites told police LeMaster walked away shortly after being dropped off and that they did not know in which direction he went.
The clerk said LeMaster came back into the lobby and was “giggling as he looked at his cellphone.” When the clerk asked if he needed any help, he did not answer.
Instead, police said in the report, he walked outside toward the pool area before heading toward U.S. 278.
Bluffton Police dealings with intoxicated residents
This is the second time in over a year that Bluffton Police encountered an intoxicated resident earlier in the night who would later die as a pedestrian in the roadway.
Close to 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day of 2021, Kenneth “Kenny” Green, 52, of Bluffton died after being struck while lying in the road on Buck Island Parkway, according to Bluffton Police Department reports.
Green was severely intoxicated with a blood alcohol content of 0.221, according to an autopsy report.
Additionally, Green had dealings with Bluffton police earlier in the night. He was already well-known to officers as someone who abused alcohol. Green was also known to lie in the road while intoxicated, reports said.
According to 911 calls, Bluffton police were notified about Green’s intoxicated behavior twice in the night prior to his death.
Green had caused a disturbance at a Parker’s gas station on Buck Island Road, trying to get customers to buy him beer. A Bluffton police officer drove Green home.
But later in the night, Green returned to Parker’s and got into a fight with the gas station clerk, according to surveillance footage. He punched the clerk in the face and wrestled with him on the ground. The police department did not write reports on either of these incidents but released dispatch logs, which have limited information on what happened.
Green was not charged with a crime that night or taken to the hospital, according to documents.
He died later in the night after lying in the roadway, apparently using his jacket as a pillow.
A month after Green was killed, the Bluffton Police Department closed his case.
Reporter Lucas Smolcic Larson contributed to this story.
This story was originally published March 29, 2022 at 12:20 PM.
