Killer of sleeping man in drive-by Columbia area shooting gets life in prison

He avoided prison six years ago when a jury found him not guilty in the robbery-killing of Columbia bagel baker Kelly Hunnewell.

But Troy Stevenson, 29, couldn’t escape justice Thursday when state Judge Daniel Coble sentenced him to life without parole in prison for a different murder — the 2021 drive-by killing of Charlie Jackson Jr. in a residential area just north of Columbia.

“This case can only be described as a total disregard for human life — that’s the only way to describe it,” Coble said at the end of a 20-minute sentencing hearing at the Richland County courthouse. Then Stevenson, in jail clothes and handcuffs, was led from the courtroom.

Jackson, a retired welder who had just turned 63, was lying in his side on April 6, 2021, watching television when Stevenson sprayed his house with 14 rounds from an automatic rifle, prosecutors said. Jackson was struck once in the lower back by a high-powered bullet and died within hours.

Stevenson’s motive, prosecutors said, was an effort to retaliate at someone he believed lived in Jackson’s house for an earlier shooting that night at Stevenson’s mother’s house.

“The evidence is crystal clear — he (Stevenson) was guilty of the murder of an innocent man,” 5th Circuit Solicitor’s office lead prosecutor Dale Scott told Coble on Thursday.

The jury spent more than 10 hours deliberating Wednesday before returning with its unanimous guilty verdict. The trial had begun May 13.

Since there were no eyewitnesses to the shooting and no weapon was ever recovered, prosecutors and investigators from the Richland County sheriff’s office and crime lab relied on an array of technological evidence to make their case.

That evidence, presented to the jury on large flat screens and a sizable whiteboard, consisted of a timeline derived from a network of acoustical “shot spotters,” which show where and when guns are fired, maps of the area, cell phone geolocation data, text messages and FaceBook postings.

In addition, video surveillance cameras in Jackson’s neighborhood captured a car similar to Stevenson’s black sedan cruising by Jackson’s house at the time shots were fired and data from his cell phone showed he was driving by, prosecutors said.

During and after Thursday’s hearing, Jackson’s widow, Ivy Wilson-Jackson, spoke of her husband as a “gentle giant” who was “the glue to our family.” The slain Jackson, who stood over 6’2”, helped neighbors and was “an all-around guy” with four children and three grandchildren and “one on the way,” she said. His nickname was “Sunny.”

“He will never walk his daughters down the aisle, or teach his grandkids how to do the things that he loved,” said Ivy Wilson-Jackson, who was married to her husband 26 years. “For what? Why? Why did he have to be snuffed out? Why did he have to be stolen from us?”

Fifth Circuit Solicitor Byron Gipson told reporters after the hearing that “the jury’s decision was the proper one ... The Jackson family has been through hell for three years.”

Jackson was slain at home, relaxing in his bed, Gipson said. “It was just senseless violence that took place and erupted and killed him.”

Other prosecutors on the case were assistant solicitors Nick Fowler and Joe Kreush.

Sheriff Leon Lott, whose detectives and crime lab investigated the case, said later Thursday, “Justice was served. This will prevent him from taking other peoples’ lives.”

In 2018, a Richland County jury found Stevenson not guilty in connection with the notorious 2013 killing of Hunnewell, 33, a single mother of four shot to death while she was baking bagels off Beltline Boulevard to supply a downtown eatery. An earlier trial of Stevenson on the same charges, including murder, ended in 2015 in a mistrial.

Stevenson, who was 18 at the time of Hunnewell’s murder, was with two other men on the night she was slain. Prosecutors charged he was the lookout and deserved to be found guilty too because “the hand of one is the hand of all,” they argued. But his attorney convinced the jury that Stevenson had no idea his two friends were going to stage a spur-of-the-moment robbery.

The two men Stevenson was with were convicted of murder in a 2014 trial. The triggerman, Lorenzo Young, is serving life in state prison. Trenton Barnes is serving 50 years. Barnes and Young are both at Lee Correctional Institution outside Bishopville. They both have long disciplinary in-prison records.

Barnes and Young had planned to rob a nearby bar on Beltline Boulevard, according to trial evidence. But it was closed. So they invaded Hunnewell’s nearby bakery, where she had been working with the door open, prosecutors said.

Hunnewell reacted by lashing out at one with a long-handled steel cooking spoon and, then, was shot., video showed. Of six shots fired, only one hit her, near her collarbone, but it was fatal. The incident lasted less than 30 seconds. The robber-killers got nothing; there was no money. Hunnewell bled to death from her wound within minutes.

Her slaying sparked outrage and raised consciousness about a deadly fact of life in Columbia’s youth culture — many young people carry guns and rob and kill with little provocation.

Hunnewell’s killing also triggered a debate about bonds that let people accused of violent crimes go free while they await trial. At the time he killed Hunnewell, Young, then 18, was out of jail on a $240,000 bond after being charged with first-degree burglary, possession of a weapon during a violent crime and armed robbery.

Speaking to Coble at Thursday’s hearing, Stevenson’s attorney Aimee Zmroczek attacked the prosecution’s case, saying it was flawed on several levels, including not interviewing crucial witnesses.

Ever since the killing of Hunnewell in 2013, local law enforcement has been out to nail Stevenson, said Zmroczek, who had successfully represented Stevenson in his 2018 murder trial. “They’ve been wanting to get him.”

Stevenson has finished his high school diploma, has a young child, has had a job as a manual laborer and lived a hard life without much male support, Zmroczek said. She suggested an appropriate sentence would be 30 years.

“We certainly intend to appeal the jury verdict,” Zmroczek told Coble.