Man who was run over twice on Hilton Head speaks out. Here’s his side of the story
About a month after Daniel Heyburn was injured in a road rage incident at the Hilton Head Burger King on Museum Street, his doctors are unsure whether he’ll ever walk again without pain or a limp.
”In 66 years, this is the most painful thing I’ve had to go through,” said Heyburn who was discharged from a rehabilitation facility and was back at his Hilton Head apartment Wednesday.
Since the hit-and-run, Heyburn said he has spent his days in physical therapy appointments. Now that he’s home, he worries about when he’ll drive again and when he can go back to work as an outside services manager at the Palmetto Hall Golf and Country Club on Hilton Head.
Heyburn’s doctors told him he may not be on his feet again until October.
Though he had an upbeat attitude while talking with reporters, the uncertainty has taken its toll, said his lawyer Patrick Carr.
“It is weighing on him,” Carr said. “He is worried about the permanent insult to his health and angry about being taken away from friends and family and his job.”
The driver, Tysha Shailayah Brown, 25, of Hilton Head, was charged with attempted murder on April 1.
What he says happened
Heyburn gave this account: Around 7 a.m. in “bumper to bumper” traffic, typical on the island during morning rush-hour, he was on his way to Burger King to pick up an order for himself and a coworker. As he was driving, he said a car driven by Brown “jerked” right in front of him.
“I swerved my wheel and, I shouldn’t have, but I did; I gave her the finger,” Heyburn said. “To me, that was it and it was over with. I’m from New Jersey where you give someone the finger and it’s done with.”
As he continued on U.S. 278, he noticed Brown following him. When he pulled into the Burger King parking lot, she began throwing things and, when he went up to her car to tell her to stop, she revved her engine. Heyburn slammed the palm of his hand on the hood of her car to tell her to stop before he tried walking away.
“I turned around and ‘boom,’ she floored it,” he said.
He remembers looking up at her and asking her to get the vehicle off of him. He said she pulled forward and then backed over his leg a second time.
The incident left Heyburn with four compound leg fractures, needing several surgeries and with titanium rods and screws throughout his right leg.
Charges pending
On that morning, Brown was heading home from dropping off a friend after a shift at the Marriott Courtyard hotel where both of them work, according to previous reporting from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.
Brown claims Heyburn followed her into the parking lot, got out of his car and beat on the hood. Reportedly frightened by the man’s actions, she attempted to drive away, thinking her car was in reverse. After realizing she had run over the man’s legs, she tried to move the car off of him, rolling over his legs again in the process.
In a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office report obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette, Brown told police she was trying to go around Heyburn and hitting him was an accident.
Security footage from the fast-food chain shows Heyburn out of his car talking to Brown in her car before the two are out of frame. It then shows Brown’s car reversing out of the parking lot and leaving the area.
Brown, who later returned, told police she went to “get her mother ... due to being upset at the situation.”
William Jenkins, Brown’s attorney, said the footage doesn’t show “all we’d like.”
Brown was released on April 13 from the Beaufort County Detention Center on a $75,000 bond. Her charges are still pending.
During the bond hearing, Jenkins argued that Brown was afraid of Heyburn.
“This is a 25-year-old girl that’s never been in trouble,” Jenkins said in the hearing. “This is a 66-year-old man who ought to know better. He’s beating on the hood of her car. ... She was scared to death and panicked.”
Carr, however, rejected any notion that Heyburn acted aggressively toward Brown.
“This wasn’t road rage; this was an act of vengeance,” he said of Brown running over his client.
When reached by phone Thursday, Jenkins said his client does not see a hand gesture as something “worthy of an irrational response.”
“We feel for Mr. Heyburn and wish it didn’t happen, but we are confident that Ms. Brown did nothing wrong and have every intention of proving that in a court of law,” Jenkins said.
This story was originally published May 5, 2023 at 9:26 AM.
