LaFrance man dies after being ejected

LAFRANCE - A 22-year-old man was found dead in a pond off LaFrance Road early Friday morning, four hours after his vehicle ran off the road and catapulted him into the water.

Carl E. Foster’s body was thrown about 75 feet across the pond around 3:30 a.m. Friday; divers found him in about 8 feet of water around 8 a.m., Anderson County Coroner Greg Shore said.

Through interviews with witnesses, Mr. Shore said he was able to determine that Mr. Foster had just left a party when the crash occurred. Tests showed that Mr. Foster was intoxicated at the time.

"His friends hid his keys from him and told him he didn’t need to be driving," Mr. Shore said. "But he found the keys and left."

Mr. Foster lived on LaFrance Road in north Anderson County with a roommate and was on his way home when the crash occurred. Dennis Duncan, who came to the scene Friday, said his 17-year-old grandson, Judson, was the first one to find the crash hours earlier.

He said his grandson was driving on Boscobel Road when he saw Mr. Foster’s Jeep Cherokee speed past him on an intersecting road. The teen-ager quickly turned his Mazda truck around and followed the Jeep. In minutes he drove up on the wreck scene and jumped into the pond to save Mr. Foster.

Divers from Anderson County, Anderson City Technical Rescue, firefighters, and emergency workers from the Townville and Pendleton rescue squads responded to the scene. At 3:55 a.m., divers first entered the pond and tried for the first hour to rescue Mr. Foster, Mr. Shore said.

A metal gate, often used on farms, was bent in half and knocked over from where the Jeep Cherokee hit it. Clothes were thrown out of the vehicle in the crash and were still hanging from where they landed in tree limbs. Scars were left on the tree from the impact.

Mr. Shore said that had Mr. Foster worn his seat belt, his life could have been saved.

Mr. Foster had worked since July at Clemson University as a landscaper, but resigned from that position on Monday, said Ross Newton, university spokesman.

Several of Mr. Foster’s friends stood at the edge of the pond Friday after workers and firefighters had left, each hanging their heads.
The young man who first found the crash couldn’t talk about it on Friday, his grandfather said.

"He just knew that whoever was driving the car would wreck when they rounded that curve," Mr. Duncan said. "He was tore up when he realized he knew who it was."