CHESTERFIELD — The Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office is mourning the loss of deputy Bernard Smith, who died in a traffic accident Saturday night.
The S.C. Highway Patrol said the crash happened at 9:10 p.m. Saturday, about two miles outside of Cheraw on Midway Road.
Smith was traveling north on a 2005 Suzuki motorcycle when he ran off the right side of the road, struck a driveway and then a ditch, S.C. Highway Patrol reports show. Smith wasn’t wearing a helmet and was pronounced dead at the scene.
Smith was off duty at the time of the wreck.
He leaves behind a wife, two children, and an entire department which said it lost a very special person and dear friend.
Chesterfield County Sheriff Sam Parker said he knew something wasn’t right last Saturday evening.
He heard a call about a motorcycle wreck outside of Cheraw, but this call wasn’t quite like the rest.
“You get those funny feelings sometimes that something’s wrong,” Parker said. “And of course in this situation I did, and I started to the wreck and received a phone call from one of my officers and he told me that he had some bad news.”
Though Smith was only 37, he’d already made his mark on the world. The former Marine and National Guardsman had been with the Chesterfield County Sheriff’s Office since 2005, and was named deputy of the year in 2008.
“Special people come along very few times in your life, that I’ve realized ... but when you get a guy that can walk in a room in our profession and brighten that room up, this is this guy,” Parker said.
Those who knew Smrih best said he was a fun-loving, hardworking man — the kind anyone would have been proud to have called a friend.
Friends say that’s what makes his sudden death all the more difficult.
“Very heartbreaking ... Bernard was probably, I’d truthfully say he was a son, I mean he was one of mine and we kind of do a family thing in this department, which we’re very blessed to do ...” Parker said.
Now a wreath hangs at the entrance of the office in remembrance of Smith and the profound impact he made on the lives he touched.
Funeral services for Smith are scheduled for noon Wednesday at the Word of Life Fellowship Church on Tec Road in Cheraw. Burial services will follow at St. James AME Zion Church in Chesterfield.
Smith’s death happened nearly a year after the sheriff’s office lost nine-year veteran Sgt. Darryl Quick of Cheraw.
Quick, 42, had served in the U.S. Army for six years. He also previously worked as a correctional officer and served as a police officer in the town of Chesterfield.
Quick was off duty when he was killed instantly July 23 after the 2000 Cadillac he was driving collided head-on with a vehicle traveling in the opposite direction on U.S. 1, about four miles outside McBee.
Michael Lambert, 34, of Patrick is charged with felony driving under the influence in connection with that crash.
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