How the sentence was calculated
Irineo Pimentel Guerrero pleaded guilty Tuesday to felony DUI resulting in death. Circuit Judge Debra McCaslin imposed the one-year mandatory minimum sentence; 355 days of credit left Guerrero with nine days to serve. The charge carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, according to The Post and Courier’s sentencing report.
The crash and investigation
The crash occurred at about 7:20 p.m. on Aug. 22, 2025, on Fickling Hill Road on Johns Island. Guerrero, then 19, was driving a 2002 Honda Accord that went into a ditch and rolled over, according to The Post and Courier’s earlier report. That report said investigators initially described passenger Julian Navarro-Hernandez as ejected from the vehicle. At the later court proceeding, Assistant Ninth Circuit Solicitor Timmy Finch said investigators believed Navarro-Hernandez left the vehicle, entered nearby woods and collapsed.
A nearby resident found Navarro-Hernandez’s body on Aug. 25, three days after the crash. The coroner identified him as 30-year-old Julian Navarro-Hernandez on Aug. 28. An arrest warrant listed Guerrero’s blood-alcohol content after the crash as .11, according to The Post and Courier.
Arrest and plea
The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office announced Guerrero’s arrest on Oct. 2, 2025. The earlier Post and Courier report said he was booked into the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center on Oct. 1 for the first time and denied bond. The dates refer to the booking and the public announcement, respectively.
At sentencing, Guerrero’s attorney, Peter McCoy, told the court Guerrero wanted to accept responsibility and that the two men had been very close. McCoy also said Guerrero’s family paid for Navarro-Hernandez’s funeral, according to The Post and Courier’s sentencing report.
Statewide DUI trends
Alcohol-impaired driving fatalities in South Carolina had been rising since 2020, according to the South Carolina Department of Public Safety’s FFY 2023 report. The 2022 figure was 19.7% higher than in 2021; the state estimated alcohol-impaired driving fatalities made up 43.9% of traffic fatalities that year, the second-highest share in the report’s ten-year span.
Separately, South Carolina Department of Public Safety statistics show 28,083 DUI-related collisions were reported statewide from 2018 through 2022, according to the agency’s DUI statistics.
