S.C.’s Bamberg County says An attorney for a woman in Bamberg County says she was wrongly charged with driving with a suspended license. The state of South Carolina has settled the case.
April Collins, a driver, said the situation caused her “catastrophic physical and emotional suffering.” The South Carolina Department of Motor Vehicles paid her $12,500 from the state’s Insurance Reserve Fund.
Collins was taken to work at the Orangeburg County jail, where she was being booked.
She got a “minor” parking ticket in May 2018 and paid a $76.88 fine in August of that year, according to a case from 2021. There was also proof that her license would not be removed even if she did not pay the fine.
Even so, Collins said she didn’t know her license was stopped in the DMV’s system. That’s why the Highway Patrol arrested her in January 2019. Collins said she was “humiliated in public” and that what happened was “horrible, traumatic, and harmful.”
Michael Fitts, a spokesman for the SCDMV, refused to say anything about the deal.
