2023 was Beaufort Co.’s deadliest year in decades for gun violence. This year may be worse

Beaufort County police reported a new peak in homicides in 2023, the area’s deadliest year in at least three decades. The troubling spike in killings comes with new trends, says Sheriff P.J. Tanner: a rise in drive-by shootings and increasingly younger victims and perpetrators.

An analysis of the year’s worth of data by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette yielded these key findings:

• Agencies across the county reported 20 homicides last year — a 122% increase from the nine killings recorded in 2022. The sheriff’s office in particular had a historic high number of homicides in the unincorporated neighborhoods where they provide policing: 12 total cases, its highest yearly rate in decades.

• The average age of the county’s 2023 homicide victims was slightly over 30 years old, the oldest being 69 and the youngest a 3-year-old girl. Of the 20 victims, 15 were Black, three were white and two were Hispanic.

• Gunshot wounds caused the majority of the year’s deaths, encompassing 17 out of 20 cases. The remaining three deaths were attributed to one stabbing, one intentional drowning and one case where the cause remains unknown.

As neighborhood feuds and retaliatory shootings continue into 2024, this year has the potential to outpace last year’s record-setting death toll. Beaufort County’s murder rates remain well below the national average and other high-crime areas in the South — but as sons, mothers and friends are continually lost to gun violence, law enforcement leaders and residents agree that action needs to be taken. Policy changes and increased trust in law enforcement might be the quickest avenues to safer streets, they say.

Last year edged out 2015 as the deadliest year in recent memory in the Hilton Head area, according to records kept by local agencies dating back to 1991. After the peak in 2015, the statistic quickly plummeted and then plateaued during the COVID-19 pandemic — but 2024 data suggests the historically high numbers might be a new normal in Beaufort County.

The Beaufort County Coroner’s Office reported 14 homicides in the first eight months of 2024. If the year’s current rate persists, the county could be in for another record-breaking year with 21 total homicides.

When asked what could be done to combat the county’s rise in gun violence, Tanner pointed primarily to legislative solutions, including harsher bond guidelines for violent offenders. Legal experts say South Carolina’s extensive backlogs of criminal cases pressures judges to allow accused shooters out of jail on bond.

Perhaps the most common struggle for investigators is witnesses who are unwilling to speak to the police, according to the sheriff.

“When we arrive on scene, when you have multiple people that live in the house, or there was a party in the yard — all the sudden, nobody knows anything,” Tanner said. “We’re being met with either negative information or no information at all, which makes the job incredibly hard.”

Tanner added that he understands why some residents remain silent “because of the fear of retaliation.” Many wrongfully believe that anonymous reporting tools like Crime Stoppers of the Lowcountry are used to identify informants, he said.

“The call’s not coming to the sheriff’s office,” he said of the independently run tip service, which will transition to being operated locally later this year. “There is no way for us to track you. We just need the information.”

Although homicides are on the rise, Tanner noted that most rates of nonviolent crime in Beaufort County are staying constant or trending downward. Burglaries, for instance, decreased 50% between 2017 and 2023.

But reports of aggravated assault appear to be on an upswing — from 410 in 2021 to 479 in 2023 — mirroring a similar hike in offenses related to the unlawful possession of firearms.

“They’re not radical, but they are increasing,” the sheriff said.

Nationally, the epidemic of gun violence has been rising sharply since the beginning of the pandemic, outpacing previous record-high death tolls of the 1990s. Deadly shootings increased 45% between 2019 and 2021, while the number of gun suicides climbed 10% during that period, according to the Pew Research Center.

Like in Beaufort County, gun violence across the country is killing increasing numbers of children. Gun deaths among U.S. residents under 18 rose 50% in just two years, from 1,732 in 2019 to 2,590 in 2021.

A map of all 20 homicides in Beaufort County last year can be found below. Scroll over any marker for information on each incident, the victims and links to previous coverage from The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette.

‘Street justice’ in Beaufort County

A particular brand of drive-by shooting was especially popular in 2023, Tanner said, perpetrated by younger shooters and maiming younger victims. It’s a series of interconnected, retaliatory moves: A gunman will drive past the home of an enemy — possibly someone who has shot at them in the past — and spray the house with bullets before speeding away.

These “trendy” drive-bys are almost always retaliatory in nature, Tanner said.

Coupled with the intent to hurt or kill someone, these attacks can also serve as intimidation tactics. For some, it’s an adherence to “street justice,” a philosophy of “taking matters into one’s own hands” to respond to or deter violence when residents believe they can’t rely on the traditional criminal justice system. After a late October shooting in the Grays Hill area that killed a man’s dog and bored bullet holes into his house, the homeowner told deputies he believed in street justice himself.

A large number of these drive-by shootings yield no injuries; some even target homes with no one inside. But all have the possibility of claiming a life, Tanner says. That’s what happened on New Years’ Day of this year, when a flash of gunfire pierced through a Burton home and killed 14-year-old Jerrieme “L.J.” Washington while he was playing video games. Investigators believe the teen was not the intended target in the yet-unsolved shooting.

‘We have to say something’

In many local shootings, the fatal shots are fired by teenagers while older accomplices drive the getaway cars, according to Beaufort native Valeria Richardson, an organizer of the Beaufort County Awareness Group that works to prevent crime in local youths. She lost her own son to gun violence in 2009.

“The problem with retaliation is when these children are shooting up each other, the other gang does not care — once they know where your parents’ houses are, they will go and shoot up that house,” Richardson said. “They don’t care. All they want is to retaliate.”

Local young men are recruited through their high schools, neighborhoods and even their own family members into gang activity, which is often tied to drug territories, Richardson said.

Richardson echoed Tanner’s claim that many county residents, specifically within the Black community, lack trust in local police. That contributes to their hesitation to talk to investigators about crime in their neighborhood, she said, even when they might know exactly who the perpetrator was.

“And I understand that people are scared. They know something but won’t say anything, or they don’t trust the police department,” Richardson said. “But we as a people in this community, we know what’s going on. We have to say something.”

One way to build trust between local police and the Black community could be increasing the number of Black law enforcement officers in the county, according to Richardson. Thinking back to her childhood, she recalled the influence of Bruce K. Smalls, a Black man and former trooper with the South Carolina Highway Patrol who was killed in the line of duty in 1985.

“He would come home, and he would take the whole community — all the boys — and he would spend time with them. He would go to their games. If a mom needed an officer to come over, she would call him,” Richardson said. “And from that generation, you can count maybe on one hand how many children went to jail or prison, because he was on lock with them. He loved children.”

No matter the skin color of local law enforcement, Richardson says community engagement is the key to building trust and keeping the streets safe. The foundation is already there, she says: Sheriff Tanner and other high-ranking officers from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office regularly attend her organization’s monthly meetings, discussing neighborhood-specific issues and socializing with residents they’ve come to know by name.

But more can always be done, she says.

“If we had more Black officers spending time in the communities — and also bring a white officer with them — if you see somebody having a cookout or whatever, just stop by,” Richardson said. “I think it would make a major difference.”