Royal Palm man pleads guilty to 2021 West Palm crash that killed his two passengers

WEST PALM BEACH — A Royal Palm Beach man will spend the next year in jail for his role in the high-speed 2021 crash that killed two of his passengers.

Samuel Newby, 29, pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide and two counts of reckless driving before Circuit Judge Jeffrey Gillen on Wednesday morning in the Congress Avenue crash that killed Donte Burney and Reontre'yn Pounds. Prosecutors dropped two counts of driving without a valid license.

Gillen sentenced Newby to 364 days in jail, followed by four years of probation for both counts of vehicular homicide. He revoked Newby’s driving privileges for three years and ordered that he pay $1,118 in court fees, as well as complete 100 hours of community service.

Newby must attend an eight-hour driving course and one session of a victim-impact panel, where victims and their families can speak about their loss. He also must write a letter of apology to the families of Burney and Pounds.

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Investigators with the West Palm Beach Police Department said Newby lost control of his Buick LeSabre as he drove at 79 mph in a 40-mph zone on July 17, 2021. The 1700 block of North Congress Avenue, near the Palm Beach Outlets, was slick from recent rainfall, police said, and the car began to spin out before it collided with a gray passenger van and a white cargo van.

An analysis of the LeSabre found that at no point in the seconds leading up to the crash did Newby hit the brakes, police said. The driver of the cargo van told investigators that he had only moments to register the sound of screeching tires before the vehicles collided.

The impact was so strong that it bound the cargo van and the LeSabre together, trapping the passengers inside. Police cut the roof off of Newby’s sedan and found his front and rear passengers, Burney and Pounds, dead inside.

First responders extracted Newby and the driver of the cargo van from their seats and drove both to a hospital. The driver of the passenger van was uninjured, according to an incident report.

Newby had never obtained a Florida Driver’s License by the time of the crash, police said.

Hannah Phillips is a journalist covering public safety and criminal justice at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach her at hphillips@pbpost.com.

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Royal Palm Beach man pleads guilty to vehicular homicide for 2021 crash