WAGENER, S.C. (WRDW/Gray News) – The family of a high school teacher killed by a utility pole in South Carolina, will get $30 million through a wrongful-death settlement.
Jeunelle Robinson, who was a teacher at Wagener-Salley High School, was struck in the head and killed by a rotting 70-year-old utility pole last August.
The wrongful death lawsuit filed by her family was settled on Aug. 15, almost a year to the day after her death.
The 113-page lawsuit alleges the condition of the poles and power lines in Wagener, South Carolina, played a large part in Robinson’s death.
Electric company Dominion Energy, which installed a light on the pole, and communications company Comporium, which owned a drooping pole line in downtown Wagener that was no longer in use, both signed off on the agreement.
It resolved a wrongful death suit brought by Robinson’s family, according to documents filed in Aiken County.
Last Aug. 16, a truck snagged the line, pulling it like a rubber band until it broke the poles and launched one into the air. The pole struck 31-year-old Robinson, who was walking south on Main Street during her lunch break, according to authorities.
The truck had a legal height, they said.
Surveillance video from a nearby store shows Robinson trying to dodge something before the pole strikes her, flipping her body around violently.
She died a short time later at the hospital.
“We appreciate the leadership of Dominion and Comporium for working with us to ensure Jeunelle’s family would not have to relive this tragedy in court unnecessarily,” the family’s lawyer, Justin Bamberg, said in a statement.
The settlement agreement does not detail how much each company will have to pay of the $30 million settlement and Bamberg’s law office said that would not be released.
The exact age of the poles isn’t known because records are no longer available. Markings on them haven’t been made in over 60 years. However, the 69-year-old mayor of Wagener said shortly after Robinson’s death that he recognized a bottlecap he had nailed to one of the poles when he was a boy.
The lawsuit included several photos of utility poles and other equipment that the defendants said show “decrepit infrastructure in Wagener that is dangerous to the public, abandoned, well outside its safe and effective operational life, and needs replacement or removal.”
A little more than a month before Robinson’s death, Dominion announced a plan to begin replacing equipment that was more than 60 years old in Wagener.
Bamberg said he hopes Dominion and Comporium will use the tragedy to pay attention to inspecting and replacing aging utility poles and other infrastructure that are potentially dangerous, especially in small towns.
Dominion spokeswoman Rhonda Maree O’Banion said in a statement that the company was pleased to resolve the case and extended its deepest sympathies to Robinson’s family.
The Associated Press left phone and email messages with Comporium.
The family plans to use some of the settlement to create the “Jeunelle Robinson Teacher’s Hope Fund” to provide school supplies and other items to teachers around the country.
They remembered how Robinson worked her way up from a substitute to her job teaching at the high school and how she often spent her own money and time for her students.
“She loved her class. She loved her students,” Robinson’s father, Donovan Julian, said in March when the lawsuit was filed. “She was a light taken too soon. She was a joy.”
Copyright 2024 Gray Local Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this report.