Do you know who killed 19 year old Tucker Hipps in 2014? In the pre-dawn hours of September 22, 2014, 19-year-old Tucker Hipps, a sophomore at Clemson University, joined his Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity brothers and fellow pledges for a run. This run would tragically be his last. Hours later, his body was discovered in the shallow waters of Lake Hartwell, beneath the Highway 93 bridge in Oconee County, South Carolina.
An autopsy determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma consistent with a fall and hitting his head on the rocks below.
The events leading up to Hipps' death have been pieced together through a civil lawsuit filed by his parents, as the criminal investigation remains open and unsolved. According to the lawsuit, the pre-dawn run was an unauthorized activity. Hipps, as the pledge class president, had been ordered to bring breakfast for the fraternity members, but he did not have enough money to do so. During the run, a confrontation reportedly occurred between Hipps and an older fraternity member, Thomas Carter King, on the bridge.
What transpired next is a matter of conflicting accounts, though no one present has ever been criminally charged. One version alleges that as a form of punishment, Hipps was forced to walk along a narrow railing on the bridge. According to a witness account detailed in the lawsuit, he slipped from the railing, tried to pull himself back up, but lost his grip and fell headfirst into the water. It was alleged that after he fell, a cell phone light was used to look for him in the water below before the group left the scene. It was not until hours later, around 1:15 p.m., that a fraternity member reported him missing to campus police, after the pledges' own search proved fruitless. A text message was even sent to Hipps' girlfriend claiming he had been seen at the library, an act his family believes was meant to 'buy time'.
Despite the presence of 29 other students on the run that morning, no one has publicly claimed to have witnessed his fall. The Hipps family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Clemson University, the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity, and three of its members: Thomas Carter King, Campbell Starr, and Samuel Quillen Carney. The lawsuit alleged hazing, negligence, and a subsequent cover-up, claiming fraternity members deleted text messages and phone calls after the incident. The family and the defendants eventually reached a settlement for an undisclosed amount.
To this day, no arrests have been made in connection with Tucker Hipps' death. The Oconee County Sheriff's Office has stated the case remains open and has been reinvestigated with 'fresh eyes'. Rewards have been offered for information that could lead to an arrest and closure for the Hipps family, who continue to advocate for anti-hazing legislation. The fraternity members have consistently denied seeing Hipps fall or having any knowledge of how he ended up in the water. The silence from those present on the bridge has left a void of unanswered questions surrounding the final moments of the young man's life.
