American Idol alum Caleb Kennedy hears from relatives of man he killed in South Carolina DUI crash

American Idol alum Caleb Kennedy heard from the family of Larry Duane Parris, the man he killed in a crash in Spartanburg, South Carolina earlier this month, during a bond hearing on Thursday.

The 17-year-old singer on February 8 was driving a 2011 Ford pick-up northbound on West Murph Road that careened into a private driveway and struck a residential building in which Parris, 54, was inside, killing the man. Kennedy was charged with felony DUI resulting in death following a crash in the wake of the incident.

Parris’s wife Donna and daughter Kelsi Parris Harvell both appeared virtually to voice their opposition to Kennedy being allowed bond in the case, according to the publication The State.

Kelsi said, ‘I see my daddy laying in his own shop, moaning and groaning, with a stranger not even calling 911.’

She said that Kennedy ‘killed my dad, point-blank,’ adding, ‘I wish I could pay a little bit of money or a lot of money to have my daddy back.’

Kelsi added, ‘I hear my screams begging for him to look at me and stay awake,’ according to WYFF. ‘I hear the firefighters cutting the door to get in there to him. I hear the surgeon telling us he’s not going to survive.’

The grieving daughter said to the court, according to WSPA, ‘If I have to relive that every day for the rest of my life, please explain to me how he even has the opportunity to see the light of day ever again. Him! He did this! He should have to sit there. We request that bond be denied.’

MADD victim advocate Kimberly Cockrell, speaking for the family, said ‘their biggest fear is that he is going to get out and he’s going to do this again to another family,’ according to the outlet.

Kennedy’s bond was denied by the circuit court judge, according to the outlet, who wanted to view Kennedy’s toxicity report prior to moving forward on the bond issue.

Prosecutors in the case say Kennedy had inhaled from a vape pen prior to the deadly crash; an arrest warrant revealed the singer had marijuana in his system when the crash occurred.

Kennedy’s defense attorney Ryan Beasley said that the singer might have reacted aversely to the combination of the marijuana and medication he’d been prescribed at the time of the crash.

Beasley, in reacting to the bond decision Thursday, said that the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) ‘is so far behind’ in cases that it could take ‘months and months before we could get back in court,’ with Kennedy remaining in custody the whole time.

‘There are much more egregious cases than this on a felony DUI that are given bond,’ Beasley told he judge. ‘He just barely turned 17, judge. It is unfair to this kid to be sitting in jail for months on a backlog with SLED and the fact that a magistrate judge down in jail didn’t do his job anyway and set a bond.’

Kennedy is due back in court for a hearing on April 14.

The singer made headlines last year after he withdrew from American Idol amid a racism scandal, as he was seen in a three-second social media clip seated next to a person wearing a white hood, which critics said appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood.

‘Hey y’all, this is gonna be a bit of a surprise but I am no longer gonna be on American Idol,’ he wrote in an Instagram post in May 2021. ‘There was a video that surfaced on the internet and it displayed actions that were not meant to be taken in that way.’

Kennedy said of the three-second video: ‘I was younger and did not think about the actions, but that’s not an excuse.’

The movie has nothing to do with racism or the Ku Klux Klan and Caleb’s mother, Anita Guy, insisted the young singer never had a racist bone in his body.

But those explanations cut no ice with online critics who savaged Caleb and claimed he was making ‘excuses’ and demanded he be disqualified from American Idol.

It was unclear if ABC asked him to withdraw at the time, or if he made the decision himself.

Kennedy apologized for the sequence of events and said he hoped to redeem his reputation moving forward.

‘I wanna say sorry to all my fans and everyone who I have let down,’ he said. ‘I’ll be taking a little time off social media to better myself, but saying that, I know this has hurt and disappointed a lot of people and made people lose respect for me.

‘I’m so sorry! I pray that I can one day regain your trust in who I am and have your respect! Thank you for supporting me.’

Kennedy’s relatives said the Snapchat video in question was taken four years ago when he was 12, the Herald-Journal reported.

His mother Anita Guy told the paper, ‘I hate this has happened and how Caleb is being portrayed by people online.

‘This video was taken after Caleb had watched the movie The Strangers: Prey at Night and they were imitating those characters.

‘It had nothing to do with the Ku Klux Klan, but I know that’s how it looks. Caleb doesn’t have a racist bone in his body. He loves everyone and has friends of all races.’