On a humid early evening in October 2024, Robert Barrs was crossing an unlit portion of Highway 178, a few miles south of Pelion, when a car struck him. The driver fled, leaving the man’s body in the middle of the roadway.

Surveillance video showed dozens of other vehicles had driven past Barrs — including several that had also hit him — before someone called 911. He’d been down for nearly 20 minutes, and the passing vehicles had created multiple trails of blood on the highway. 

Barrs, a retired carpenter in Pelion, had celebrated his 74th birthday less than a month earlier. 

S.C. Highway Patrol asked the public for help in tracking down the car that fatally struck him. News of the incident attracted considerable attention on social media, with numerous commenters expressing shock that so many people had driven past Barrs before someone finally stopped to call emergency responders.

What has not yet been reported is that a Lexington woman and her father have been charged in Barrs’ hit-and-run death, and police records show that tips from the public were key to cracking the case.

Alexis Jaiden Long, 30, has been charged by a Lexington County grand jury with failing to stop at the scene after hitting Barrs, a felony punishable by up to 25 years in prison.  South Carolina law mandates a driver who injures someone or causes death to provide aid, such as calling for medical help.

Informants led investigators to Long and the 2012 Chevrolet Impala she was driving that night, according to police records the Chronicle obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Case files with over 100 pages of documents detailed the police investigation, which included DNA testing and cellphone analysis, as indicated below:

When troopers first spoke to her on Nov. 8, 2024, Long said she’d hit a deer while driving her family’s Chevrolet Impala around the time that Barrs was killed. She said the car, which got damaged, was at her dad’s home in Lexington.

But when troopers met with her dad earlier, Thomas Long denied any knowledge about the car or its location. 

Four days later, armed with a search warrant, troopers found the beige Chevrolet Impala in a paint booth on Thomas Long’s property. The car was registered to him.The vehicle was in the process of being repaired, with the damaged parts already removed, investigators said. Those included the driver’s side door and the front fender. 

Troopers swabbed different portions of the car, including the inside front fender. They found DNA that matched that of Barrs, lab tests showed.

Many of the car fragments recovered from the area where Barrs was killed also matched the Chevy’s damaged parts, analysts said. 

Thomas Long has been charged by highway patrol with being an accessory to a felony after the fact.

His arrest warrant states he’d knowingly “aided in the commission of a felony by attempting to tamper or destroy evidence from a hit and run involving death.”

Alexis Long’s attorney and Thomas Long’s attorney both declined to comment for this story.

Barrs’ family did not respond to interview requests.

Alexis Long has also been indicted with driving that night while her license was suspended. It was suspended several months earlier after she pleaded guilty to driving while her blood alcohol concentration was over the legal threshold of 0.08%.

Alexis Long’s boyfriend was with her when she crashed into Barrs, an informant had told troopers. Investigators said an examination of her cellphone showed the couple arguing via text about three months after Barrs’ death, with her boyfriend threatening to turn her in for fatally hitting a pedestrian if she didn’t answer his phone calls.

To police, this indicated she knew that she’d hit a person and not an animal. 

She and her father are free from jail on a $20,000 surety bond each, according to court records.

Barrs was killed while crossing Highway 178 after he’d bought a six-pack of beer from a nearby country store, investigators said. His blood alcohol level then was three times the legal limit, and troopers said he’d been in the roadway illegally.

Alexis Long, they said, was heading south at the speed limit of 55 mph when she struck Barrs, and she kept driving.