‘American Idol’ Contestant Caleb Kennedy Charged With DUI That Resulted In Death

Caleb Kennedy, a 17-year-old music artist known as a finalist on American Idol‘s most recent season, was charged with a felony DUI after crashing his car into a private building in Spartanburg County, South Carolina, killing a man inside.

Kennedy was arrested on Tuesday around 12 p.m. after police reached the crash scene. It seems Kennedy’s 2011 Ford pickup truck veered off the road and crashed into the building, which was a workshop built out of a detached garage.

The crash remains under investigation, so details around it are sparse. It is not yet clear whether Kennedy was under the influence of alcohol or other drugs at the time of the crash.

All we know is that the man killed was identified as 54-year-old Larry Duane Parris, and Kennedy is eligible to be tried as an adult for the felony charge in the state of South Carolina. A court date for Kennedy has yet to be confirmed.

Kennedy made it all the way to the final five contestants on the 2021 season of American Idol. In his last performance, he shocked and impressed the judges with a country cover of the Coldplay song “Violet Hill.”

However, that performance would end up being his last of the show, as Kennedy would depart the program after a social media post surfaced of a young Kennedy sitting next to someone in what looked like a Ku Klux Klan robe. Kennedy’s mother claimed that he was imitating characters from a 2018 horror movie The Strangers: Prey at Night, but Kennedy still ended up leaving the show and apologizing for the photo online.

In relation to the photo, Kennedy wrote “I was younger and did not think about the actions, but that’s not an excuse. I wanna say sorry to all my fans and everyone who I have let down.”