Berkeley County man faces gross neglect charges in crash that killed daughter

Donte Thornhill, a 29-year-old resident of Westerly, Rhode Island, was indicted by a Berkeley County Grand Jury last week on one count of Gross Child Neglect Resulting in Death. The charge stems from a crash that occurred on Jan. 4 on Interstate 81 in Berkeley County, an incident that killed his five-year-old daughter.

The Berkeley County Sheriff’s Office stated that multiple potential criminal violations were reviewed during the investigation into the January accident. Thornhill was driving a pickup truck when it collided with a tractor-trailer. Authorities reported that the young girl was ejected from the vehicle and sustained fatal injuries. Medics attempted lifesaving measures at the scene, but the child died at the hospital. A state medical examiner’s report concluded that the child died from blunt force trauma to the head and neck.

Thornhill was not immediately arrested for the crash. He was caught in July when Rhode Island state police stopped him on I-95 south in Richmond. The stop was for a tinted windshield, and he also received a ticket for driving without a license. During the traffic stop, troopers discovered an active warrant from West Virginia and arrested him as a fugitive from justice. A judge ordered him held without bail.

The criminal complaint details conflicting accounts regarding the child’s safety restraints. Thornhill initially told authorities that his daughter was not in a car seat but was wearing a seatbelt because she wanted to lie down. In a later conversation at a hospital, he claimed she was sitting up and belted. Evidence from the vehicle indicated that neither Thornhill nor his daughter were wearing seatbelts at the time of or prior to the collision. Investigators also noted an odor of marijuana coming from the Chevy pickup.

The witness accounts and physical evidence contradicted Thornhill’s initial claim that he was traveling at the speed limit. The tractor-trailer driver stated that Thornhill pulled out directly in front of him, leaving insufficient time to react. Brake marks on the road showed the tractor-trailer struck the pickup from behind, though the marks curved left slightly before impact, suggesting the semi driver attempted to steer around the collision.

A man who was working in a garage near the interstate witnessed the event. He told authorities that he saw a black Chevy pickup parked on the shoulder with its turn signal on. The witness described the pickup entering the travel lane with virtually no acceleration before being struck. He rushed to the scene and found the child lying outside the rear driver’s side door.

Two weeks after the crash, the sheriff’s office obtained a search warrant to retrieve data from the airbag control module of Thornhill’s truck. The data confirmed that Thornhill was not wearing a seatbelt and was driving at 32 miles per hour at the time of the crash. The module did not provide data on rear occupants. If convicted, Thornhill faces up to 15 years in prison and a fine of $5,000.