Lawsuit Filed After Death of Midlands GOP Leader

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by DYLAN NOLAN

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Melissa Sprouse Browne, the widow of former Lexington County Republican Party state executive committeeman Chip Browne, has filing a lawsuit alleging negligence on the part of the driver who fatally struck her husband as he rode his moped in June of this year.

Browne’s lawsuit, (.pdf) filed by Jason Reynolds and Michael Parks of the Samuel Reynolds law firm, seeks relief from 21-year-old North Carolina resident Skyler Worrell, the driver of the vehicle which struck Browne, relatives of Worrell who allegedly allowed him drive to their van and Zeco LLC, the firm on whose behalf Browne alleges Worrell was conducting business at the time of the collision.

The suit claimed Worrell failed to come to a stop in the amount of time that a reasonable driver would, leading him to fatally wound Browne seconds after pulling into the parking lot of the Hilton Garden Inn in West Columbia, S.C.

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The suit placed blame on Worrell’s relatives and employer for entrusting him to drive after Worrell was charged with numerous driving-related legal infractions.

“Defendant Worrell has a horrible driving record with a long list of unsafe driving infractions,” the suit alleged.

Melissa Sprouse Browne sat for an interview with FITSNews to recount the circumstances that led to her husband’s death, as well as her pursuit of justice after his passing.

Browne explained that she often works into the evenings at her real estate business, and that her husband liked to visit the Waffle House just over a mile away from their home when they weren’t able to eat together due to their schedules.

When Melissa returned from work on the night of her husband’s accident she noticed Chip’s moped was not in the garage, and knew from a previous conversation that he had gone to get dinner.

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“Chip was gone on the bike, the scooter – he’s had this little moped for years, I always looked at it as a toy,” Browne explained, noting her husband often used the moped to drive around their neighborhood and look at his neighbor’s landscaping.

“That was his thing, he was a big gardener,” she said. “Our yard is full of tropical plants, and he enjoyed seeing what other people have planted.”

Browne assiduously avoided spending significant time on the frontage road connecting his neighborhood to the Rush’s and Waffle House restaurants he frequented to avoid traveling on a road with a fast speed limit on his 50cc vehicle. Instead, he elected to cut through the adjoining parking lots of the three hotels which stand between the busy intersection and the entrance to his neighborhood.

Melissa Browne recounted the phone call that informed her of her husband’s accident.

“I heard this guy, I still don’t know who it was that called me, he’s like ‘her name is Melissa, right?’ and I’m like, ‘Who is this?’ and he said, ‘I think your husband has been in an accident,'” she recalled.

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Browne telephoned a close friend and neighbor who joined her in speeding to the nearby scene of the accident.

“I see blue lights, so I know there’s an officer on the scene, and I pull up and I see Chip on the ground, but I couldn’t process what I’m looking at,” Browne recalled. “He’s awake. He’s not moving, and before I can get on the ground, the officer comes up to me. He’s like, ‘are you the wife?’ and I’m like, ‘yes, what is happening here?'”

The officer informed her that an ambulance was inbound.

Knowing that help was on the way, her first question was “‘who did it?'”

At that point, the officer pointed to Skyler Worrell.

“So I go over to him,” she said. “He’s standing behind his van.”

Browne asked Worrell for his account of the accident. According to her recounting of their conversation, he claimed he “looked both ways and didn’t see him.”

“Okay, I’m sure you didn’t mean to hit him,” she told Worrell.

“That’s all I had for him,” Brown said as she recalled the chaos of the scene of the accident. “I turned around because ambulance was there, fire was there – there’s fifteen people on the ground working on Chip.”

Although the accident occurred only hundreds of yards away from a hospital, the gravity of Browne’s injuries necessitated his transport to the region’s sole trauma center several miles away.

Thus began Browne’s grueling thirty-day battle for survival.

“He’s in a trauma bay. I hear the commotion of what’s going on,” Browne was able to speak with her husband after doctors stabilized his condition.

“He said, ‘I’m not gonna make it, I failed you’ and I said, ‘No, you didn’t. You did not,'” she recalled.

Browne emphasized the severity of her husband’s injuries.

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Chip and Melissa Sprouse Browne (Via: Facebook)

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“He had two cracked vertebrae and his neck was broken from C2 to T1,” Browne was soon intubated to prevent respiratory failure.

“I had to come out of the room, and that’s one of the hardest things I’ve ever done – to not cry, not make him think I thought he was about to die,” she said. “I wanted him to have faith, to hold on, to be strong.”

Browne said she maintained this philosophy throughout her husband’s stay in the ICU.

“If you’re in this room you’re positive, if you’re not you’re out,” she said. “You can’t be anything but positive.”

Efforts to save Browne continued around the clock.

“At 2:30 in the morning, the nurse comes out and the doctor comes out and they show me his crisis MRI, and I see all the damage,” she recalled. “There’s so much of it, so we start signing consent forms explaining the surgery.”

“With that high neck injury, you expect someone to end up being quadriplegic,” but Browne said that despite the high level of risk, the surgery went well.

Unfortunately, Browne’s breathing issues only worsened as the traumatic injury triggered a buildup of fluid in his chest cavity and lungs.

“He was breathing on his own,” she said. “But if he would lay flat he’d desat.

‘Desatting’ refers to a dangerous drop in the oxygenation of one’s blood.

When asked how her late husband handled the situation emotionally Browne recalled both optimism and fear, saying he was “positive and scared.”

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Browne had reason to feel both of those emotions. Hopes were high after he exhibited early signs of regaining control of of his limbs. The couple began planning his placement in a rehabilitation facility after his discharge from the ICU. These hopes were shattered, however, when Browne’s pulse oxygenation dropped so significantly that he died.

While Browne was successfully resuscitated and re-intubated, doctors could not prevent the continued build up of fluid in his lungs. After he coded a second time, Melissa Browne was faced with an impossible choice: have a feeding tube and tracheostomy tube installed and permanently confine her husband to medical care facilities that he felt would afford him little quality of life – or let him attempt to breathe on his own.

“He wouldn’t want that,” she said. “I wouldn’t want it, nobody would want that. He was developing so much fluid everywhere. I think he was just tired and it was more than he could handle. He told me a few days before he passed that he was exhausted.”

“He had a rally day,” Browe recalled, “I was like ‘oh, we’re going to rehab, everything’s good’, but I knew better… I couldn’t help it.”

Patients often experience a last burst of energy in the hours immediately proceeding their death, something referred to in the medical profession as “rallying.”

That night Browne’s pulse oxygenation dropped for the last time. He was allowed to pass away pursuant to his own desire not to live permanently attached to breathing machines.

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“Chip was a dedicated leader and friend, and his loss is deeply felt across our community,” Lexington county GOP chairman Mark Weber told FITSNews shortly after his passing, adding “our hearts and prayers are with his devoted wife, Melissa Sprouse Browne, during this difficult time.”

Browne gratefully recalled the outpouring of support she received from those around her in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s passing, she cited this support as crucial to her remaining strong as she pushed authorities for answers about the accident.

Browne expressed frustration with the West Columbia Police Department (WCPD), saying she wished they’d been more thorough in their investigation and more clear in their communication with her throughout the process.

“I met with Chief Boyce at 1pm on July the eighth, he told me that the corporal who was on the scene was on vacation until the tenth, and that when he came back on July the tenth, they would have a discussion about the investigation.” Browne pointed out than an incident report provided by WCPD to FITSNews showed the case was closed on the ninth, a day before the corporal was due to return from his vacation.

In an email to Browne WCPD chief Marion Boyce said he had assigned an officer to reconstruct the scene of the accident, adding that charges of reckless homicide and reckless driving were considered but ultimately not filed.

“The deputy solicitor agreed that based on the totality of the circumstances, there was not enough evidence to support a criminal prosecution,’ Boyce told Browne.

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Browne acknowledged her disappointment that prosecutors and police didn’t feel there was sufficient evidence to criminally convict Worrell, but expressed her hope the preponderance of the evidence evidentiary standard applied in civil litigation will allow the court to take into consideration Worrell’s driving history to deliver what she sees as a just outcome.

“I was expecting to seek justice through the criminal courts, but based on things that happened at the scene at the time of the incident that will not be possible, so I will do everything in my power to seek justice for Chip,” she said.

“Chip didn’t deserve what happened to him, and neither did I,” Browne said, adding the last few months have been “the most unimaginable journey I’ve ever been on.”

“This is not a path that I should be walking, it’s just not right.”

As the time of this writing it is unclear whether the defendants named in the suit have been served or retained counsel as there is currently no reply to the suit filed in the eleventh circuit public index. FITSNews has attempted to reach both Worrell and Zeco LLC, but has yet to hear back from either party.

Should any of the parties involved in this story wish to share their perspective we will append their comments to this story, stay tuned…

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…

(Via: Travis Bell)

Dylan Nolan is the director of special projects at FITSNews. He graduated from the Darla Moore school of business in 2021 with an accounting degree. Got a tip or story idea for Dylan? Email him here. You can also engage him socially @DNolan2000.

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