Three teens dead after crashing stolen car into tree during Irmo police chase
Irmo police are still trying to piece together why six teenagers in a stolen car were fleeing police before they crashed Wednesday, killing three of the passengers, two of whom were brothers.
Travis Lamount Green Jr., 15; Travion D'Monte Green, 13; and Reshad Daloamir Davis, 15, died from multiple injuries after the 9:30 p.m. crash on Piney Grove Road, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said in a release.
Travis and Travion are half-brothers, Fisher said.
The teens were fleeing from Irmo police after officers saw them driving more than 20 miles per hour over the speed limit on Irmo Drive near Friarsgate Boulevard, according to police Capt. Courtney Dennis.
Officers chased the vehicle at speeds of more than 80 mph through Irmo until the driver lost control and hit a tree and a street sign on Piney Grove Road near Leaphart Elementary School, according to Dennis.
A resident, who said the car crashed in front of her home, reported she and her husband heard the collision and thought it was thunder or a tree falling.
“(My husband) came back in and said, ‘It’s worse. There’s a car in the front yard,’” said the Piney Grove Road resident, who spoke with The State but did not want to be identified.
She said she saw only four occupants from the car.
“They were doing CPR on the one that died," she said. “They were doing CPR on another one for quite a while. In my heart, I knew he wasn’t going to make it, when they’ve done that much.”
A portion of Piney Grove Road was closed for hours after the crash. The car wasn’t removed from the scene until around 5 a.m., she said.
“There wasn’t a whole lot of damage to the car that we could see,” she said.
A row of bushes next to the road where the car crashed was damaged. A street sign also was taken out by the vehicle, and there was visible damage to a crape myrtle tree by the street.
Davis died at the crash scene, according to Fisher. The other five were taken to local hospitals, where the Greens later died.
The other three occupants, who have yet to be identified, had injuries ranging from critical to non-life threatening, according to the coroner.
None of the vehicle's occupants were wearing seat belts, according to Lance Cpl. David Jones of the S.C. Highway Patrol, which is investigating the crash.
Detectives found a gun with one of the teens in the car, according to police. Dennis would not say if the gun was found on one of the deceased passengers. He also declined to say if anything in the vehicle indicated where the teenagers were coming from or where they were going.
The Pontiac G6 the youths were in had been reported stolen in the Columbia Police Department's jurisdiction.
Columbia police spokeswoman Jennifer Timmons said the report about the stolen vehicle came in around 7:30 a.m. Wednesday on Regency Park Drive, which is just off Broad River Road less than a mile from Piney Grove Road.
No charges have been filed, and Dennis would not say Thursday afternoon what charges, if any, are expected.
"It's a shock to this area," he said. "It's a shock to our agency. It's a shock to our community. It's just a shock because there's no winners in this whatsoever. We're heartbroken for the community and the families and for our agency to have to go through this."
The Highway Patrol's accident reconstruction team is investigating the crash.
This is the second police chase in Irmo in the past month that landed teenagers in the hospital.
Three teens were injured during a police chase through Irmo and the Harbison area on March 20. The teens, who also were driving a stolen car, lost control during the chase and crashed in the 2900 block of Dreher Shoals Road. The injuries were all non-life threatening.
This story was originally published April 5, 2018 at 9:05 AM with the headline "Three teens dead after crashing stolen car into tree during Irmo police chase."