Family of woman killed by falling utility pole to receive $30M settlement

COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) — The family of a South Carolina woman struck in the head and killed by a rotting 70-year-old utility pole will get $30 million through a wrongful death settlement reached Thursday.

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, which resolved a wrongful death suit brought by Jeunelle Robinson’s family, according to documents filed in Aiken County.

Last August, a truck snagged the line, pulling it like a rubber band until it broke the poles and launched one into the air, striking Robinson, who was grabbing lunch during her break as a social studies teacher at Wagener-Salley High School, authorities said. The truck had a legal height, they said.

Surveillance video from a nearby store shows Robinson, 31, try 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.

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, a town of 600 people about 35 miles (55 kilometers) southwest of Columbia.

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.

Comporium is glad to have resolved the lawsuit, and “our prayers have been with the family of Ms. Robinson and the many lives she touched since this accident occurred,” Chief Operating Officer Matthew Dosch said in a statement.

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.”

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the town. It is Wagener, not Wagner.