Dog-killing ‘psychopath’ murdered two residents at Columbia care home, lawsuit alleges

A Columbia care home where two vulnerable residents were murdered in the span of five months has been sued on grounds it failed to provide a safe environment.

“Driven by monetary gain and reckless disregard for the safety of their residents, Defendants welcomed a violent psychopath into a space where vulnerable adults should have been safe and protected, and warned no one,” said the lawsuit, filed in Richland County state civil court.

The alleged “violent psychopath” was a fellow care home resident, Marc-Antony Cantrell, 25, who had a criminal record that included being convicted in 2019 of torturing three dogs to death and second-degree arson for attempting to burn up his parents’ home in Aiken, according to the lawsuit and court records.

Defendants in the case are New Hope Home Solutions, at 2214 Harper St., and its operator, Brittany Reynolds-Jackson. She could not be reached for comment.

In a 2021 application with the Columbia Board of Zoning Appeals, she wrote the 1,104-square-foot, one-bath home would serve up to eight residents and protect the city’s “vulnerable population,” including those with mild to moderate mental illness, the formerly homeless and older adults with limited resources.

The lawsuit against the care home and Reynolds-Jackson was filed by Peggy Ondrea, the grandmother of Jared Ondrea, 22, whom police charge was allegedly strangled by Cantrell at the home in March of last year.

After searches last March failed to find Jared Ondrea, he was listed as a missing person for months by Columbia police until early July, when the body of a second home resident, Deshea Butler, 35, was discovered in a trash bin. Butler was Cantrell’s roommate, police have said.

According to Ondrea’s lawsuit, video surveillance of the property led to Cantrell’s arrest for Butler’s death.

Cantrell had stuffed Butler’s body into a plastic container, “carried it outside (with the body visible), and then placed the body in a trash can that he rolled across the street,” the lawsuit said.

“After his arrest, Cantrell confessed to police that he had also killed Jared (Ondrea) and provided specific, graphic details as to how the murder was conducted and the means of disposing of Jared’s body,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit says Cantrell disposed of Ondrea’s body in much the same manner he disposed of Butler’s.

“Cantrell was able to strangle Jared with a garrote or rope within the cramped, locked confines of the 1,100-square-foot facility (a space roughly the size of a half-tennis court), and did so without anyone noticing,” the lawsuit said.

“Cantrell then, still somehow unobserved by Defendants, shoved Jared’s lifeless body into a large plastic bin, dragged the heavy bin down a common hallway, and out the door of the facility. Defendants never noticed any of this. Cantrell’s act of disposing of the body also went completely unnoticed by Defendants,” the lawsuit said.

Jared Ondrea’s body has not been recovered and is believed to be in a Richland County landfill under as much as 100 feet of refuse.

That the body is apparently in a landfill is particularly painful to his relatives.

“We are overwhelmed with sadness and grief knowing that Jared is buried in a landfill. Jared is not trash and a landfill should not be the final resting place of a soul with that much kindness and generosity,” the Ondrea family said in a statement to The State.

State Department of Mental Health

Before going to live at 2214 Harper St., Jared Ondrea had lived in Chapin with his grandparents, the lawsuit said.

But after the S.C. Department of Mental Health recommended that Jared consider living in a competent residential care facility to learn independent living skills and socialization with his peer group, Jared and his grandparents chose 2214 Harper St. as Jared’s new home, the lawsuit said.

State Mental Health staff “specifically recommended” the Harper Street facility, the lawsuit said. “This was the only residential care facility recommended by SCDMH, even though other licensed and competent facility alternatives existed in Richland County and adjacent counties.”

Jared and his grandparents were “repeatedly assured by both SCDMH and Defendants that the Harper Street facility was suitable and safe and offered a beneficial and protected environment specifically for individuals, like Jared, who have mental illness or other disabilities,” the lawsuit said.

Services provided to residents such as Jared were supposed to include meals and access to health care, assistance with bathing and grooming, room cleaning and laundry, the lawsuit said. Activities on the premises would be monitored “to ensure the residents’ personal safety, health, and well-being,” the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit also said that the care home never disclosed that Cantrell had a significant criminal history, although “a simple internet search... would have revealed that an axe-wielding Cantrell confessed in 2018 to setting his grandmother’s house on fire to cover up the fact he had brutally killed the family’s three dogs.”

A Department of Mental Health spokeswoman issued the following statement when queried about Jared’s case:

“Due to state and federal privacy laws, SCDMH cannot comment on specific incidents or individuals.’” the statement said. “However, SCDMH endeavors to assist its adult patients who are in need of identifying available local housing. Patients are free to accept the agency’s assistance, or not, as the Department does not have custodial authority over any of its patients.”

Marc-Antony Cantrell

In March 2019, Cantrell (whose first name in official records is sometimes spelled Marc-Antony and at other times, Marc-Anthony) had pled guilty in Aiken County criminal court before state Judge Clifton Newman to three counts of torturing dogs and one count of arson, according to Aiken County court records.

Cantrell had been arrested in May 2018 and confessed to sheriff’s investigators at that time to killing his mother’s dogs and attempting to burn her Aiken house down, news accounts at the time said.

According to the Aiken County sheriff’s department, Cantrell told investigators that he blacked out after taking amphetamines and when he came to, he “had an ax in his hand and ‘saw that he had killed the dogs,’ “ according to a news story in The State. He had started the fire to conceal the fact that he had killed the dogs, according to a sheriff’s incident report.

At Cantrell’s 2019 guilty plea, Judge Newman gave him credit for 311 days in jail and a 10-year suspended sentence on the arson and ill treatment of animals charges, according to Aiken County court records.

State Department of Corrections records show Cantrell was in state prison from after his guilty plea until April 29, 2022. At that time, he was released on probation, according to the S.C Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services.

Sometime after that, Cantrell came to live at 2214 Harper St., where he was arrested last July by Columbia police and subsequently charged with and indicted for the murders of Butler and Ondrea.

Cantrell is now in state prison serving what is apparently the remaining portion of his 2019 sentence for arson, according to prison records. He is eligible for release in November 2031, prison records said.

Court records indicate he was transferred to state prison in January.

Cantrell’s lawyer, Richland County public defender Zoe Bruck, declined comment.

No date has been set for a trial for Cantrell on the murder charges, said Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson. Assistant prosecutor Kathryn Cavanaugh is handling the case.

The lawsuit against the care home and its operator was filed Feb. 29 by Columbia attorneys Joe McCulloch, Dick Harpootlian, Andrew Hand and Kathy Schillaci.