ATV driver sued after Hilton Head crash seriously injured passenger
Already facing criminal charges, the driver of an ATV that crashed and left a passenger with serious injuries on Hilton Head Island is now being sued for his role in the accident.
The crash happened shortly before midnight Oct. 22 as the defendant, 25-year-old Hilton Head resident Daniel P. Geoffroy Jr., drove the utility vehicle with two passengers on a multi-use path near Arrow Road on the island’s south end.
When the utility vehicle crashed into a ditch, Ashley Facenda, a 25-year-old Bluffton resident and new mother of a four-month-old, was thrown from the vehicle.
Filed Nov. 3 by Facenda in Beaufort County civil court, the personal injury lawsuit accuses Geoffroy of driving the utility vehicle while intoxicated, driving too fast on the pathway and “recklessly” crashing the vehicle into a wooded area.
The week after the crash, county deputies charged Geoffroy with reckless driving, open container, uninsured motor vehicle and operating a vehicle that is not registered and licensed. Those misdemeanor-level charges remain pending in Bluffton Magistrate court.
Austin M. Blake, a Beaufort-based attorney representing Geoffroy, said his client was not charged with driving under the influence because he volunteered to take sobriety tests at the scene and “was deemed not under the influence.”
Facenda was airlifted to Savannah’s Memorial Health University Medical Center with significant road rash, a collapsed and punctured lung and several broken bones, including her collarbone and scapula. She also suffered fractures to her fibula, rib and spine, according to an online fundraiser organized on behalf of her family.
Facenda’s attorney Tabor Vaux wrote in an emailed statement that she was “continuing her recovery.”
“We are in the beginning stages of our investigation and may comment further once we know more, but I can assure you we will follow the evidence wherever it takes us,” Vaux wrote.
The other woman on the ATV was left with a broken nose and a “bad laceration to her face,” Facenda’s father, Christian Powers, wrote on Facebook. The driver “sustained no serious injuries.”
As of Friday, the online fundraiser created to support Facenda’s family had raised $37,590 of its $40,000 goal.
Hilton Head ordinances prohibit small motorized vehicles like ATVs on the town’s public pathways.
