murder

Federal prosecutors have charged a South Carolina man with carjacking resulting in death and the gunning down of a New Mexico state police officer who had stopped to help him.

A man who killed a U.S. Postal Service mail carrier has been sentenced to life in prison. Prosecutors say he shot her after she refused to deliver a large package of marijuana to his home, instead leaving in the mailbox telling him to pick it up at the post office. The court found 25-year-old Trevor Raekwon Seward killed 64-year-old Irene Pressley as she delivered mail in rural Williamsburg County in September 2019.

Federal prosecutors say a South Carolina prisoner already serving a life sentence for murder used a cellphone to orchestrate killing another man. Authorities say 43-year-old Daniel Shannon was sentenced to a second life term for the latest death. Federal prosecutors say in 2019 Shannon was running a methamphetamine ring from prison and arranged to have a man killed who he thought stole from one of his drug runners.

A South Carolina gas station owner has been charged with murder in the death of a 14-year-old boy whom he allegedly chased from the store and shot in the back. Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott says station owner Rick Chow incorrectly suspected that Cyrus Carmack-Belton had shoplifted water from the Shell station. After a verbal confrontation, Carmack-Belton fled and was pursued by Chow's son. Rick Chow joined the chase, armed with a pistol. Lott says Chow fired, striking Carmack-Belton in the back.

Authorities say a 37-year-old mother drowned one of her daughters in their South Carolina home and was trying to kill another child when the oldest daughter was awakened by screams and managed to save her sister. Investigators say Jamie Bradley Brun is charged with murder and attempted murder after the early Friday attack in their home on St. Helena Island. Brun is being held without bond.

Authorities say a South Carolina man has been charged in a Michigan woman's 1988 slaying after investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to narrow the pool of suspects to a single family. St. Joseph County Prosecuting Attorney David Martin says 53-year-old Robert Odell Waters was arrested Sunday afternoon in Beaufort, South Carolina, in the killing of 19-year-old Cathy Sue Swartz. Swartz was beaten, stabbed and strangled in December 1988 in her apartment in Three Rivers, about 20 miles south of Kalamazoo near the Michigan-Indiana border. Police say her 9-month-old daughter was in the next room when her mother was killed.

Justices on South Carolina's highest court have erased an order that cut 16 years off a convicted murderer's sentence. The prisoner secured the deal after reporting another inmate's escape that had gone undetected for two days. The 3-2 ruling vacating the reduced sentence for Jeroid Price came less than two hours after the South Carolina Supreme Court heard arguments in the case. The justices wrote that they would explain their decision later. During oral arguments Wednesday, the justices said in part that they didn't like Price's deal having been kept secret. Price walked out of prison 19 years into his 35-year murder sentence. The state is arguing that the deal to release him was invalid.

A man and his girlfriend suspected of killing five people in three states last year have pleaded guilty to two of the killings in South Carolina. Tyler Terry and Adrienne Simpson were each sentenced to life in prison without parole Wednesday after pleading guilty to two counts of murder and numerous other charges, Prosecutors agreed to not seek the death penalty in any of the five killings as long as the couple also plead guilty to two fatal shootings near St. Louis, Missouri, and another in Memphis, Tennessee. All five deaths happened in May 2021,

Authorities say a man shot and killed five people in a South Carolina home while he was using drugs and hadn't slept in four days. Spartanburg Sheriff Chuck Wright says 24-year-old James Douglas Drayton was arrested in Burke County, Georgia, on Monday. He crashed during a police chase, after he tried to rob a convenience store and kidnap an employee. The sheriff says Drayton confessed to the killings, and handed over the gun he said he used. The sheriff said he doesn't have a possible motive.

A South Carolina family is seeking justice for a woman killed by her neighbor who was intoxicated while doing target practice in his backyard. Nicholas Skylar Lucas is accused of murder in the shooting death of Kesha Luwan Lucille Tate after crime scene technicians debunked his claim that the shots ricocheted off his target. The local sheriff's office says the only way she could have been struck is if the shooter turned in her direction and intentionally fired. But the family says a guilty conviction would not be enough to avenge her death. They're seeking a change in the law that would make it illegal to practice firing guns in a residential neighborhood.