One Dead in Single-Vehicle Crash on Poplar Road in Barnwell County
Keyshawn Jenkins, 27, was ejected and killed when his Nissan Maxima overturned at 2:15 a.m. on Poplar Road, a rural Barnwell County corridor with a documented history of fatal crashes.
A Barnwell man was ejected from his vehicle and killed in the pre-dawn hours of April 4 after his Nissan Maxima ran off the left side of Poplar Road and overturned on a dark rural stretch that has drawn fatal crash responses from South Carolina Highway Patrol more than once.
Keyshawn Tyreek Jenkins, 27, of Barnwell was the sole occupant. South Carolina Highway Patrol placed the crash at the intersection of Poplar Road and Red Bud Drive, approximately six miles south of Barnwell, at 2:15 a.m. The Barnwell County Coroner's Office confirmed that Jenkins was ejected and succumbed to his injuries at the scene. Funeral arrangements are being handled by B.F. Cave Funeral Home. Jenkins had been a junior Sports Management major at Voorhees University in Denmark. The investigation remains open.
The stretch of Poplar Road south of Barnwell has surfaced repeatedly in crash reports. At the corridor's intersection with S.C. 3, located roughly five miles south of town, a driver of a Honda Ridgeline traveling east on Poplar Road was killed after the vehicle crossed into the path of a northbound box truck. In December 2021, a separate collision on U.S. 278 near Poplar Road killed one driver and put another in the hospital. The cluster reflects what road safety data has long identified as a structural risk: secondary rural roads in South Carolina accounted for 294 of the 964 fatal collisions recorded statewide in 2020, the highest share of any road classification in the state.
The 2:15 a.m. timestamp adds another compounding factor. Nighttime conditions sharpen the hazards already present on unlit two-lane roads, where limited shoulder width and the absence of rumble strips leave little margin for a drifting vehicle. Jenkins' ejection is a variable investigators will examine closely: in South Carolina, roughly 30 percent of occupants ejected during traffic collisions sustain fatal injuries, according to state Department of Public Safety data, making ejection one of the strongest single predictors of a crash turning deadly.
No improvements to the Poplar Road corridor, including enhanced signage, shoulder work, or rumble strip installation, have been announced by the South Carolina Department of Transportation. With the road's fatality record now documented across multiple incidents and multiple intersections, the question facing SCDOT and Barnwell County officials is no longer whether this corridor warrants action, but when that action comes.
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