When first responders arrived at the crash scene, they found a black pickup truck overturned with beer cans and individual shots of Fireball, a cinnamon flavored whiskey, strewn about the road, according to an incident report from the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
But the alleged driver, Bowen Turner, was miraculously alive. Even though evidence indicated Turner had not been wearing a seat belt, he had managed to crawl out of the overturned vehicle mostly unharmed.
It was not Turner’s first break: The 21-year-old Orangeburg resident has been the focus of critics who say well-connected defendants get favorable treatment in South Carolina courts. In 2022, Turner pleaded guilty to a single count of assault and battery after being accused of rape by two teenage girls, one of whom later committed suicide. A judge initially sentenced Turner to probation as a youthful offender, but he was sent to prison a month later after he threatened a sheriff’s deputy during an arrest for underage drinking.
He had been out of jail less than four months before the March 9 wreck in Florence County.
On dash cam footage from the crash scene obtained by The State Media Co., one first responder can be heard telling Highway Patrol trooper Sierra Calomeris that alcohol was involved. “You could’ve lit a match over his mouth and started a fire,” the first responder said.
Video footage and reports about the crash obtained by The State provide new details about Turner’s combative arrest, during which he exhibited erratic behavior and alternately pleaded with and lashed out at law enforcement in an attempt to stay out of jail.
When Calomeris arrived at the scene, tire marks told a story confirmed by a witness. Turner’s truck had crossed the center line onto the wrong side of the road, barely avoiding another vehicle before over-correcting, running off the right hand side of the road and flipping several times. A four wheeler he had been towing in a trailer was ten yards from the truck.
At McLeod Regional Medical Center on March 9, Turner initially denied to Calomeris that he had been in a wreck. He then said he didn’t know why he lied, according to an incident report.
Turner appeared to be drunk, Calomeris wrote in her report. A strong smell of alcohol came off of his body, his speech was slow and slurred, and his mannerisms were repetitive. When she performed a seated sobriety test, Turner struggled to follow instructions and complete the tests.
As Calomeris started to arrest Turner, he ripped off his neck brace and “began trying to leave while screaming, using profane language.” At one point he demanded privacy so he could use the bathroom and then attempted to escape through a locked door, according to the report. Along with a hospital security guard, Calomeris subdued and handcuffed Turner while he continued to resist.
Once he was in Calomeris’ car, his erratic and aggressive behavior continued. Footage from inside the vehicle showed Turner talking nearly nonstop throughout the 23-minute drive as he attempts to get a response from the stone-faced deputy.
He asks for cigarette. He wheedles, whines, begs and demands Calomeris let him out of his handcuffs. At one point, he accuses her of having a “vendetta” against him.
“You got me in handcuffs, how am I resisting arrest?” Turner yells at the trooper, who ignores his outburst, keeping her eyes on the road. “Don’t worry, don’t worry you god d–n d–e b—h,” he says, using a homophobic slur. After a moment of silence, he says “and I apologize, I didn’t mean to say that.”
“You said exactly what you feel,” Calomaris responds.
Throughout the drive, Turner repeatedly asks if he can “be honest,” offering to share information about what’s going on in Florence and asking to be driven to see his grandmother, who he says is sick.
Admitting to having been in prison for “assault and battery,” Turner insists that he can’t go to jail because he is a “white boy” and is supposed to be in protective custody.
At times, his pleading gave way to sudden spikes of rage.
“Please undo my handcuffs, ma’am. I cannot keep doing this, ma’am,” Turner, wriggling and straining against his cuffs, pleads “Ma’am see, god d–n ma’am.”
“You’re making them tighter because you, …,” Calomeris starts to reply.
“Because they’re tight as f—k!” Turner screamed in her face, cutting her off. Calmly, Calomeris calls ahead to the jail, asking for officers to meet her at the facility’s entrance.
“Man you soft as f—k. Why are you lying like that? I know you want to think you’re hard because you whatever, why are you lying like that? Because I ain’t combative.”
Once inside the jail, Turner’s outbursts continued. Calomeris wrote in her report that Turner began “sizing up” other officers and saying, “if he wasn’t in handcuffs things would be different.”
When asked to provide a sample for a Breathalyzer test, Turner pretended to blow into the device, but not hard enough to register a result. As a result, officers indicated that he refused a Breathalyzer test.
Turner was ultimately charged with and pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, public disorderly conduct, having an open container of beer or wine in a motor vehicle, and failure to wear a seat belt. He was also charged with resisting arrest, which is still pending.
Turner did not have a lawyer listed for his most recent charges.
On March 28, Turner was returned to the custody of the state Department of Corrections. Under the conditions of his youthful offender sentence, he can serve up to four years in prison in nonconsecutive blocks of time.
Turner is currently incarcerated at Turbeville Correctional Institution.
Who is Bowen Turner?
Turner came to statewide attention after he was charged with sexually assaulting three teenage girls in and around Orangeburg in 2018 and 2019.
One of those victims, Dallas Stoller, died by suicide in November 2021, leading prosecutors to dismiss charges. The next April, Turner, whose father is a former investigator for the First Circuit Solicitor’s Office and whose family hired state Senate Minority Leader Brad Hutto to represent him, pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of first degree assault and battery for one of the attacks.
Less than a month after he received a probationary sentence under South Carolina’s Youthful Offender Act, Turner was sent to state prison after being charged with underage drinking and threatening the life of a law enforcement officer. Reports at the time said that after Turner was arrested while drinking underage at a bar, he threatened to bite off the finger of an Orangeburg County deputy who told him that the jail’s COVID policy required Turner to wear a mask.
Turner pleaded guilty to those charges.