Bluffton courtesy ride lawsuit settled, but aunt still wants change from police
More than a year after a fatal hit-and-run killed her nephew, a Beaufort woman is still pushing for changes to a police procedure she believes led to his death.
Bluffton resident Andrew “Andy” LeMaster, 40, was heavily intoxicated and had been locked out of his home by his wife when a Bluffton police officer gave him a courtesy ride to a nearby hotel on March 21, 2022.
Without an ID or means to pay for a room at the Okatie hotel, his family claimed, LeMaster stumbled onto U.S. 278 and was struck and killed around 8:30 p.m. that night.
Lora Knoppel, LeMaster’s aunt, claimed the department caused her nephew’s death by not taking him to a jail or hospital, where he could be monitored. In the months following the tragic accident, she lobbied for the Bluffton Police Department to implement training or a new policy concerning courtesy rides.
She says her concerns were largely ignored, even in a private meeting with police leadership.
“I wanted accountability,” Knoppel told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “I wanted them to go on the record and state, ‘We will not do this anymore. We are not going to treat our police department as if we are a taxi service.’”
Knoppel said LeMaster, with a blood alcohol concentration of 0.495 that night, was in no condition to fend for himself. She added that Bluffton police should not have dropped him off at the Hampton Inn & Suites because the hotel is outside the department’s jurisdiction.
Terry Finger, an attorney for the Town of Bluffton, previously said officers concluded LeMaster’s condition “didn’t warrant medical attention” and that LeMaster agreed when police suggested they take him to a hotel for the night.
Knoppel pushed back, saying LeMaster showed several signs of heavy intoxication like falling over in front of police and struggling to string together sentences. LeMaster appeared to object to the hotel dropoff as the officer pulled up to the building, according to in-car camera footage reviewed by The Island Packet.
The Town of Bluffton settled early this month with LeMaster’s estate after a 2024 wrongful death lawsuit blamed his death on officers who “abandoned” him at the hotel.
Knoppel was not a beneficiary in the lawsuit — the funds were distributed to LeMaster’s partner and five children — but she said her focus is making sure what happened to her nephew doesn’t happen again.
“We know every day (police) are encountering people under the influence of drugs, of alcohol,” she said. “What are you going to do if you wind up with a seriously mentally ill person on drugs? This was my major concern with them: Where is your training?”
Police did not charge the driver of the car in LeMaster’s fatality. That person reached out to police the day after the crash when he saw news coverage of LeMaster’s death. It was dark out when the driver struck something in the roadway he thought “fell off a truck.”
Asked about policy changes in the wake of LeMaster’s death, Bluffton’s Chief of Police Joseph Babkiewicz said his department recently began using Lexipol, a program offering training, certification and other resources to law enforcement agencies. He said the addition was not in response to a specific incident and he wasn’t sure if the program offered guidelines specific to courtesy rides.
“We can’t pinpoint every single situation on policy, but we do afford our officers discretion,” he said. “But always in the interest of public safety, to make sure that whatever decision they make, whether they’re taking somebody to jail or they’re leaving them with somebody or if they want to give someone a courtesy ride somewhere to make sure that they do so to a responsible person.”
Officers typically contact one of their supervisors, either a sergeant or lieutenant, before making a decision about a courtesy ride, Babkiewicz added.
‘This won’t be the last time’
The night LeMaster was killed wasn’t the first time Bluffton police encountered an intoxicated resident who would later die in the roadway as a pedestrian.
Close to 6 a.m. on New Year’s Day of 2021, Kenneth “Kenny” Green, 52, of Bluffton was struck and killed by a vehicle while lying on Buck Island Road, according to Bluffton Police Department reports. He had a BAC of 0.221.
According to 911 calls, Bluffton police were notified about Green’s intoxicated behavior twice in the night prior to his death. 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.
He died later in the night after lying in the roadway, apparently using his jacket as a pillow.
Speaking about cases like Green’s, Knoppel suggested the creation of an “Andrew’s Law” requiring law enforcement to be proactive in their handling of incapacitated residents — like contacting family members who can ensure the person’s safety.
That’s what happened once before, Knoppel said, when a Bluffton officer brought LeMaster to her house when he had again encountered police during a similar situation. She still wishes she had gotten a call from her nephew that night in March 2022.
“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?”
LeMaster was the father of five boys, remembered by Knoppel for his love of the outdoors and his lucky baseball cap “he would rather die than go anywhere without.”
In July 2022, on what would have been his 41st birthday, his family installed a white cross near the intersection of Fording Island Road and Okatie Center Boulevard, where he was struck and killed.
It’s now one of three memorial crosses at that intersection, Knoppel says — another reminder that what happened to her nephew could happen again.
“It’s just not changed,” she said. “So I assure you, if you do not stand up and take accountability for something of this nature, this won’t be the last time.”
