2 months after hit-and-run killed 94-year-old SC man, troopers make an arrest

Troopers have charged a South Carolina man in a hit-and-run that killed a 94-year-old man outside a rehabilitation center just before Thanksgiving. 

Arturo Alejandro Beatriz, 35, of Seneca, is charged with leaving the scene of an accident involving death and no S.C. driver’s license, according to Cpl. Bill Rhyne of the S.C. Highway Patrol. He remains in the Oconee County Detention Center on $25,232 bond, according to jail records. 

Beatriz is accused in the Nov. 14 hit-and-run that killed 94-year-old Dale Howard Showers, who died a week later, according to troopers. 

Showers was found on the edge of Houston Rice Road near Seneca Health and Rehabilitation, and had been at the facility visiting his wife before he was hit, the Oconee County Coroner’s Office said at the time. His vehicle was parked near the center’s main entrance, and surveillance footage showed him walking through the upper parking lot toward Houston Rice Road before he was hit. 

Leaving the scene of an accident involving death carries a minimum one-year prison sentence and a maximum of 25 years, as well as a minimum $10,000 fine and a maximum of $25,000, under South Carolina law.