Shanice Renee’ Dantzler-Williams, top right; Stephanie Dantzler, bottom left, and Miranda Renasia Dantzler-Williams, bottom right, were killed in a Mother’s Day crash involving former Charleston County Sheriff’s Deputy Emily Pelletier, top left. (Pelletier photo from Charleston County Sheriff’s Office; victims’ photos from Koger Mortuary; crime scene photo from lawsuit)
A South Carolina deputy racing another deputy to a nonemergency call smashed into another car, killing a mother and her two daughters on Mother’s Day 2022, a wrongful death lawsuit alleges.
Stephanie Dantzler, 53, and her daughters Shanice Dantzler-Williams, 28, and Miranda Dantzler-Williams, 22, died on May 8, 2022, when Charleston County Sheriff’s Deputy Emily Pelletier allegedly struck their vehicle on an unlit rural highway, according to the lawsuit.
Filed on Monday in a South Carolina state court, the lawsuit says that the nighttime crash happened as Pelletier sped past a stop sign without emergency lights and sirens and through two lanes of Highway 17 when she violently struck the vehicle “like a missile” at a speed of 73 mph.
Pelletier entered Highway 17 without the right-of-way from a poorly lit wooden side road, the lawsuit says.
“It was not humanly possible for Shanice to avoid Defendant Pelletier’s speeding County Vehicle prior to the crash,” the document states. “Shanice was not at fault and in no way contributed to the cause of the crash.”
The impact sent the victims’ vehicle careening into a utility box, power pole, signs, and trees.
Pelletier’s vehicle rotated counterclockwise onto the other side of New Road and stopped on the southbound shoulder of New Road in a south-westerly direction.
All three suffered catastrophic injuries and died.
The lawsuit names Pelletier, fellow Charleston County Deputy Clinton Sacks, whom Pelletier was allegedly racing, the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office and Charleston County. It alleges negligence, carelessness and recklessness and seeks an unspecified amount for damages to be determined in a trial. It alleges Pelletier struggled tremendously in driver’s training and operated her vehicle in a dangerously unsafe manner.
“Pelletier’s training record was riddled with problems. She struggled with geography. She struggled with her driving yet was always given an acceptable grade,” said attorney Richard Hricik who represents Betty Simmons, the mother of Stephanie Dantzler and grandmother to Shanice and Miranda Dantzler-Williams, in a news conference. “She was promoted to the field without further supervision. Her post-promotion data shows she deviated from the dispatch-provided driving instructions over 100 times in the six months that followed over and over. And the investigation into that fatal Mother’s Day crash was flawed and limited from its very start.”
The lawsuit documents GPS and other county vehicle data showing that Pelletier and Sacks had been driving their vehicles in violation of South Carolina law and department policy “at such extreme and outrageous speeds” in “conscience-shocking deliberate indifference to the lives and safety of those on the road that evening.”
Simmons said it was just like murder.
“They’re supposed to be protecting them, not taking their life, and that’s what they did. That was just like murder. You can just give them a pistol, and she could just go ahead and shoot them. It was as simple as that,” Simmons said. “All this could have been preventable if they checked her driving record and not give her a car for a weapon.”
A Charleston County Sheriff’s Office spokesman declined to comment, citing pending litigation.
Last June, Charleston County Sheriff Kristin Graziano discussed the investigation, saying Pelletier ran a stop sign, speed was a contributing factor, her lights and sirens were not activated, and there was no dash camera in the vehicle.
“There’s no doubt about the facts. I think we all agree on the facts,” Graziano said, KCTV reported. “She ran a stop sign and collided with, hit the vehicle that was driven by Shanice. She struck the vehicle, there’s no doubt about that.”
The lawsuit alleges the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office has a long and known history of dangerous and reckless driving by its deputies.
The lawsuit says the agency admits this history in its Emergency Vehicle Operation and Driving Lesson Plans, the lawsuit alleged.
The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office was involved in 78 collisions in 2019 and admitted fault in over half of them, the lawsuit alleges. In 2020, the agency was involved in at least 23 collisions and admitted fault in at least seven crashes, the court documents say.
Pelletier was fired from the department one month after the crash. She faces three counts of reckless homicide in a pending case, according to WCSC.
Sacks voluntarily resigned from the department and had not been disciplined for actions related to the night of May 8, the station reported.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
