As Sergeant Phillip Darnell looks back on his 32-year law enforcement career, he notes how it came full circle. Like many of the fatal traffic collisions he has reconstructed over the years, it wasn’t a precisely measured circle drawn with a compass, or a linear line pointing to the answer. But still, he is satisfied with the final result, and the work he put in to get here.
“I’m finishing up where it all started,” said Darnell, whose diverse law enforcement career is bookended by stints with the South Carolina Highway Patrol. “It’s been a great career. I have no regrets whatsoever, and I have met so many people and learned so much.”
The North Carolina native graduated from NC State with a degree in turfgrass management, but the seed for his law enforcement career was planted years earlier. During a high school English project, he had to interview a North Carolina state trooper. What was supposed to be a 30-minute interview turned into a three-hour ride-along — and the eventual realization of a dream.
It was while building a golf course in Blythewood that a chance encounter with a South Carolina state trooper inspired him to pursue that dream. A short time later, Darnell launched his law enforcement career with the Department of Public Safety’s Bureau of Protective Services in 1994, with the goal of eventually becoming a state trooper. After a lateral transfer to the Highway Patrol two years later, he started his patrol career in the Upstate, in Troop 3. Three years after that, he started dabbling in collision reconstruction and advanced investigations.
While learning the ins and outs of crash investigations with the Highway Patrol’s Multidisciplinary Accident Investigation Team (MAIT), Darnell accepted a job offer from a collision reconstruction firm in North Carolina, starting work there just after Labor Day in 2001. Barely a week later, the 9/11 terror attacks shocked the world and put Darnell’s traffic career on hold. As a U.S. Navy Reserve member, he was sent on a 22-month deployment, after which he worked for a collision reconstruction firm in South Carolina.
Then an opportunity to teach collision investigations presented itself, and Darnell spent seven years as an instructor at the South Carolina Criminal Justice Academy. But a casual conversation with his friend, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, opened the door for Darnell to go from teaching — back to doing.
“He put the application down on the table in front of me and said, ‘Fill this out,’” Darnell said. That led to a position as Sergeant over the sheriff’s department’s Traffic Unit, where he also worked as a collision reconstructionist.
“I had a ball there,” he said, recalling not only the collisions he worked, but also stints with the marine patrol and even supervising a couple of homicides. “You learn a lot about investigations in a way that’s different from how we investigate traffic collisions.”
Another piece of the puzzle he didn’t see coming was becoming a TV celebrity as a law enforcement officer. But he was added to Richland County’s rotation of deputies to appear during the first two seasons of the documentary series “Live PD.”
“At that point it hadn’t really taken off. We would just go out and do our jobs and have a camera crew riding with us,” he said. “As it became bigger, we’d get recognized in public by fans of the show, even when you’re off duty. When I started in law enforcement, giving people your autograph was writing them a ticket. Until the show, I’d never had anybody come up and ask for that.”
While Darnell loved working for the sheriff’s department, a conversation with retired SCHP Lieutenant Colonel Bobby Albert at a Law Enforcement Network meeting opened the door for Darnell to return to the Highway Patrol and the MAIT Unit in 2023.
“I was welcomed with open arms,” he said. “I wouldn’t be where I am today if it wasn’t for the Highway Patrol.”
He has worked some high-profile collisions during his time with MAIT, including the Interstate 77 bus crash that killed a Lexington County middle school student in 2025, and the crash that killed Richland County Deputy Jacob Salrin in 2023. Every fatal collision is tragic, but for Darnell, finding and charging the drivers in hit-and-run cases brings the most satisfaction because he knows it’s bringing closure to the family of someone who was left to die alone.
“It doesn’t bring their loved one back, but being able to say to that person’s family, ‘They didn’t get away with it’ — that’s what I enjoy,” he said. “We can only be successful because of the people we work with, though. The word ‘Team’ is literally built into the name of MAIT. It isn’t a solo endeavor.”
Just like a collision investigation, life has twists and turns that take things in unexpected directions. After 32 years in serving others, Darnell has only one regret: He wishes he would have enjoyed it more along the way.
“I didn’t realize how fast things would fly by the first 10 or 15 years,” he said. “Whether it’s a career or a vacation, sometimes you need to slow down, enjoy the scenery, enjoy the ride, and enjoy where you are right now. Because if there’s one thing this job will teach you, it’s that tomorrow is not promised.”
