Coroner names Beaufort County woman killed in head-on crash on SC 170 Friday night
The Beaufort County Coroner’s Office has identified a 60-year-old woman who died in a head-on collision on a local highway Friday night.
Susan M. Buckley, of Port Royal, was pronounced dead at 10:13 p.m. Friday, according to Beaufort County Coroner David Ott. She was wearing a seatbelt at the time of the collision. It is unclear which of the two vehicles involved in the collision had encroached into the oncoming lane.
The fatal crash occurred as Buckley drove north on S.C. 170 in a 2008 Ford sedan and another driver traveled south in a 2021 BMW SUV, according to Master Trooper Mitchell Ridgeway of the South Carolina Highway Patrol. The vehicles “collided head-on” near the highway’s intersection with Old Bailey Road, about nine miles north of Bluffton town limits. First responders pronounced the woman dead at the scene while the driver of the SUV was taken to Beaufort Memorial Hospital with non-fatal injuries
As of Monday morning, an obituary for Buckley had not been posted and funeral services had not been publicly scheduled. Public records indicate she spent her early years in New Jersey before moving to Hilton Head in the mid-1980s, later living in Bluffton and Beaufort.
An autopsy was underway Monday morning at the coroner’s facilities in Port Royal, Ott said.
Friday night’s fatal investigation remains under investigation by the SCHP.
