A routine Sunday afternoon stop for gas turned into a life-altering nightmare for one South Carolina woman, and the whole thing traces back to a driver with a grudge and a gun. What started as a road rage chase through northeast Columbia ended in a massive fireball at a local gas station, leaving three cars destroyed, two people hospitalized, and one woman now recovering from severe burns after undergoing skin graft surgery.
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department is still piecing together exactly what happened and how it escalated so quickly, but deputies say the aftermath was unlike anything they typically encounter.
Olivia Rembert Finch had just left church on the morning of May 17 and stopped at the Spinx gas station on Lee Road, which she described as her regular spot, never imagining a routine stop for gas was about to turn into a life-threatening ordeal. She heard a loud screech of tires and turned to see a car barreling straight toward her before it slammed into the pump she was using. The impact set off an instant chain reaction of fire, trapping Finch amid the chaos. “I thought I was going to die. I thought that was it for me,” she later said…