They say that the most creative souls are often the most tortured, and this would definitely appear to be the case with one American Idol singer in particular…
Former American Idol contestant Caleb Kennedy has now been charged with felony DUI after he had a car crash that killed a man in South Carolina.
People Magazine is reporting that the 17-year-old contestant on the 2021 edition of American Idol is being charged with felony driving with intoxication that resulted in a death because he crashed his truck into a building in Spartanburg, South Carolina at 12:42 P.M. on Tuesday (February 8th).
“A 2011 Ford pickup was traveling north on W. Murph Road when the vehicle traveled onto a private drive at 269 W. Murph Road and struck a building,” Master Trooper Mitchell Ridgeway of the South Carolina Highway Patrol tells People. “A person inside the building sustained a fatal injury as a result of the collision.”
“The driver is identified as Caleb Andrew Kennedy, 17-year-old male from Roebuck, South Carolina,” Trooper Ridgeway confirms. “This crash remains under investigation by the South Carolina Highway Patrol. There will be no further updates at this time.”
They identified the man in the building as 54-year-old Larry Duane Parris. They pronounced him dead at the local hospital just three hours after this crash had taken place.
Kennedy’s mother is Anita Guy and she also happens to be his manager. She has not responded to any requests for comment at the time of this writing.
Kennedy has had several bond hearings to date and has been continually denied, with the judge wanting to wait until the result of the blood evidence has come out before setting a bond amount.
There is no question that Kennedy had a successful run as a country singer on American Idol last year, with a number of standout performances. He had his audition with an original song called “Nowhere.” He also had plenty of covers of Willie Nelson and Chris Stapleton songs, and he even received the chance to perform “Fly Over States” with Jason Aldean.
“The most promising thing about you, Caleb, is you sound like you,” judge Luke Bryan told him after that performance.
Why was Kennedy headed down this destructive path? Perhaps the reason why is because his time on Idol came to an abrupt end as he was heading into the Top 5 episode last May after a video surfaced online where it showed him as a pre-teen sitting next to an individual with a hood similar to those that are affiliated with the Ku Klux Klan.
Kennedy and his mother denied that the video had anything to do with the KKK, but he took ownership on his official social media pages and apologized to those that he had let down and thanked those that had supported him.
“I was younger and did not think about the actions, but that’s not an excuse,” he wrote.
It’s a shame that this American Idol singer hadn’t found a better coping mechanism than alcohol to deal with this issue.
