Hollywood man pleads guilty in drunken driving crash that killed boy | News

“We all loved to spoil him and life is too quiet without him,” she said of Jaxson Bennett.

A metal rod had impaled one of the brothers in the foot. Other injuries suffered by the brothers include a broken chest plate, a facial fracture, eye injuries, vision loss and nerve damage. A brother was slightly injured, Bozarth said.

The Bennetts were awarded at least $1 million as a result of two civil lawsuits, according to court records. About $750,000 came from the Pitt’s liquor liability insurance, according to court records.

Heyward, who suffered a broken knee, had mixed his psychiatric medications with alcohol that night, Bozarth said.

In 2020, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia following a mental health crisis at a tire store in which a family member and police escorted him to the hospital, said Drew Carroll, the Heyward’s lawyer, in court. In the years that followed, he struggled to keep up with his medications and his condition continued to deteriorate, Carroll said. But he was taking them at the time of the accident.

Heyward was previously convicted of armed robbery when he was 20 in 1996, Bozarth said. He then worked for Charleston County for 23 years at the Bees Ferry Landfill in West Ashley and was a heavy equipment operator. He had few problems with the law, other than a few bounced checks, Carroll said.

Jefferson said people failed to notice the subtle signs of his developing schizophrenia, which, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, can begin to show its symptoms in late adolescence.

“I suspect they were stewing since high school in a way that most people would have missed,” she said.

Heyward’s guilty plea to arson with intent to defraud his insurance company came a year before the fatal crash and stemmed from his mental illness, Carroll said. He lit a rag on fire while driving and placed it on the dashboard, emphasizing that he loved that car and didn’t need the money at the time, he said. -he declared. Heyward admitted to police that he started the fire intentionally and then filed an insurance claim, according to an arrest warrant affidavit. The affidavit said his insurance company was investigating another car fire claim from 2017.