The trial of an Appling man accused of vehicular homicide while driving a utility-terrain vehicle on a public road continued for a third day Wednesday.
Family members of Morgan Shea sat tense and sometimes wept as witnesses laid out her final moments seen by no one except the defendant, Bentley DeVore. DeVore’s family members, who lost his twin brother last year, were likewise solemn in the Columbia County Superior Court courtroom.
DeVore, 22, is accused of taking Shea on a fatal ride on a rural highway near his family home while they and friends socialized and drank alcohol. Shea, 20, was a junior at Kennesaw State University majoring in public relations who only recently had met the DeVores.
The day saw competing versions of the wreck emerge but did not reach the expected crux of Bentley DeVore’s defense – that he was not behind the wheel.
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Visiting Assistant District Attorney McKenzie Gray on Wednesday called on accident reconstruction expert Kelly Kennett to explain how he determined the crash occurred. Kennett has degrees in mechanical and aerospace engineering.
Using toy- and doll-sized models, Kennett said DeVore ran off the right side of the road, overcorrected then tipped left, which ejected Shea and caused her fatal injuries. DeVore, being the “low-side occupant,” was thrown out with less momentum and escaped with only minor injuries, he said.
The prosecution rested in Superior Court Judge J. Wade Padgett’s court just before lunch.
Afterward, DeVore’s defense attorney Leah Abbasi brought in reconstruction expert Daniel Billington, who touted his accreditation by the Accreditation Commission for Traffic Accident Reconstruction.
Billington pointed in photos to marks on the road he said were left by the crash but not noticed by Columbia County investigators. He said a gouge the prosecution claimed was made by the UTV’s trailer hitch could not have been and was likely a scrape left by the vehicle’s back tire rim on the driver’s side as it slid down the road on its side.
Billington played a video he created of the fatal ride from inside a two-seater UTV. A second video showed him using a torch and a tool to attempt to damage the vehicle’s roll bars as a test. Padgett stopped him.
“What part of your training makes you an expert in tool marks?” Padgett said. The video was excluded.
In Tuesday testimony, Columbia County Sheriff’s Investigator Randall Bao showed evidence he collected including photos of the right side of DeVore’s back covered in road rash.
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Sheriff’s Deputy Keith Warner, the lead investigator in the incident described DeVore as having bloodshot, watery eyes and slurred speech at the scene.
DeVore has been in prison since 2020 after his First Offender status was revoked based on the charges in Shea’s death. He was serving probation for a 2019 plea to fleeing police and criminal damage to property.
According to news reports in July 2019, DeVore was driving a 2012 Ford F250 and towing a boat when a state trooper tried to pull him over for a traffic violation in Screven County. The reports said DeVore reached speeds up to 147 miles per hour in Burke County and drove through a field of peanuts, damaging the property.
Susan McCord is a staff writer with The Augusta Press. Reach her at susan@theaugustapress.com
