Sentencing Awaits in Fatal DUI Crash

A 20-year-old man faces up to 35 years in prison following a guilty plea Monday for charges stemming from a deadly July 2011 DUI crash that killed a 72-year-old grandmother.

Samuel McCauley, tearful and apologetic, accepted blame in court for a drunken crash on the Interstate 26 off-ramp at the crosstown that killed Ladson woman Eleanor Caperton. He was traveling the wrong way on the ramp at the time of the accident.

“No one deserves to die the way I killed Eleanor Caperton,” McCauley said. “I wish it was me that had died that night, but I can’t change what happened. ... I am and will forever be sorry.”

McCauley, 19 at the time, did not remember the events immediately leading up to the crash, but he reportedly asked a police officer to kill him in the emergency room when he was told a woman died in the crash.

Deputies immediately took McCauley to jail, at his own request, as Circuit Court Judge Thomas L. Hughston Jr. ponders his sentence.