A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable..
A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible early. Partly cloudy skies. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable.
Crime scene tape blocked off portions of South Street near America Street as investigators gathered evidence on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds (left) and Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg answer questions from reporters during a press conference on May 31, 2022, addressing Monday night’s shooting on the East Side, at St. John’s Chapel in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Tahira McGee of North Charleston is accused of injuring a Charleston County sheriff's deputy during a confrontation that followed a shooting incident on Charleston's East Side on May 30, 2022. Provided
Ayesha McGee of North Charleston is accused of injuring a Charleston County sheriff's deputy during a confrontation that followed a shooting incident on Charleston's East Side on May 30, 2022. Provided
Maurice Malloy. Charleston County Sheriff's Office/Provided
Measuring tape surrounds a bullet hole on the outside wall of a South Street home on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Jocelyn Grzeszczak/Staff
Community activists including Justin Hunt (left) and Pastor Thomas Dixon (right) gathered to speak outside the Eastside Community Development Corporation on America Street on May 31, 2022, in Charleston in response to the shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Charleston Police crime scene technicians bag evidence from the scene on South Street, near America Street, on May 31, 2022, where several people, including a city police officer, were injured in a shooting shortly before midnight in Charleston’s East Side neighborhood. according to authorities. Brad Nettles/Staff
Crime scene tape blocks America Street as investigators gather evidence after a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Matthew Fortner/Staff
Joseph Watson joined fellow East Side community members on May 31, 2022, in Charleston as they gathered in response to the shootings on Memorial Day on South Street. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Crime scene tape and evidence markers are seen on America Street as investigators gathered evidence May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Crime scene tape blocked off portions of America Street as investigators with SLED used a FARO machine to scan the area as they gathered evidence on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Crime scene tape blocked off portions of South Street near America Street as investigators gathered evidence on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Measuring tape surrounds a bullet hole on the outside wall of a South Street home on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Jocelyn Grzeszczak/Staff
Crime scene tape blocks America Street as investigators gather evidence after a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Matthew Fortner/Staff
Joseph Watson joined fellow East Side community members on May 31, 2022, in Charleston as they gathered in response to the shootings on Memorial Day on South Street. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Crime scene tape and evidence markers are seen on America Street as investigators gathered evidence May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
Crime scene tape blocked off portions of America Street as investigators with SLED used a FARO machine to scan the area as they gathered evidence on May 31, 2022, in Charleston. Charleston police said several people were injured in a late-night shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
A pregnant woman, a 17-year-old girl and a Charleston police officer were among 10 people hospitalized after a mass shooting at a late-night Memorial Day party in the city's East Side neighborhood, authorities said.
Four people remained in critical condition the afternoon of May 31, Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds said at a news conference. No deaths have been reported, and police indicated the pregnant woman did not lose her baby.
A police officer came under fire after responding to a noise complaint around 11:40 p.m. at 41 South St., Reynolds said.
Two bullets struck his police cruiser as he took cover and called for backup, Reynolds said. The officer was not shot, but he suffered minor injuries from shattered glass. At least one bullet was found lodged in the headrest of the squad car, police said.
"We are lucky we don't have a dead cop," Reynolds said.
"Up to 100 people or more" were on South Street attending an unauthorized party in a vacant lot when the shooting started, the chief said. The party was the third unauthorized event held on the block since late April, he said.
Some residents who attended the news conference voiced frustration with how police officers handled the gathering, saying they contacted authorities about the party well before shots were fired.
"We need to do better," Reynolds acknowledged.
More East Side neighbors gathered later in the afternoon to express their frustration in the wake of the shooting. Resident Steve Bailey called for an independent investigation into what police officers knew about the block parties prior to the violent outburst. Bailey writes a freelance column for The Post and Courier.
The cops knew about each of the three parties, Bailey said, because he told them. The resident said he had called, emailed and even met with law enforcement officials about the unauthorized events, but his concerns weren't taken seriously.
"The first two events, nothing happened. (Police officers) got lucky," Bailey said. "They ran out of luck when we came to the third event."
Mayor John Tecklenburg said at the news conference he plans to examine law enforcement's response to the shooting to understand "what went wrong, what went right, how we can do a better job."
Charleston Police Chief Luther Reynolds (left) and Charleston Mayor John Tecklenburg answer questions from reporters during a press conference on May 31, 2022, addressing Monday night’s shooting on the East Side, at St. John’s Chapel in Charleston. Gavin McIntyre/Staff
Monday's party began at a private residence, but the large crowd eventually spilled into a vacant lot and the street, Tecklenburg said.
Surveillance footage provided by a neighborhood resident shows dozens of people walking on South Street before gunfire sends them scrambling for cover. Two women cower behind an SUV as a man jumps over a fence and lies in the grass before sprinting away, the video shows.
Sporadic gunfire is heard for at least 45 seconds in the video.
The shooting marked the latest bloodshed in a neighborhood that has long grappled with gun violence and a persistent drug trade. It was one of at least a dozen mass shootings that occurred across the country over the Memorial Day weekend, according to reporting by The Washington Post.
More than 100 placards marked evidence at the sprawling crime scene, which extended across several blocks, Reynolds said. Not all of the evidence collected was shell casings, but much of it was, the chief said, for both pistols and long guns. Reynolds said some of the casings were for .223 ammunition, a large projectile commonly used in semiautomatic weapons.
“I have seen the pictures from the crime scene," he said. "It is no joke.”
Charleston County sheriff's deputies and North Charleston police officers helped local police control the crowd after the shooting. Two women were arrested on allegations they assaulted two deputies amid the chaos, authorities said.
Tahira McGee of North Charleston is accused of injuring a Charleston County sheriff's deputy during a confrontation that followed a shooting incident on Charleston's East Side on May 30, 2022. Provided
Ayesha McGee of North Charleston is accused of injuring a Charleston County sheriff's deputy during a confrontation that followed a shooting incident on Charleston's East Side on May 30, 2022. Provided
Tahira McGee, 50, of North Charleston is charged with second-degree assault and battery and resisting arrest. Ayesha Saleemah McGee, 26, of North Charleston is charged with third-degree assault and battery. Both women appeared at bond hearings May 31.
Sheriff's Deputy Bobby Hoskins told Magistrate Amanda Haselden that Tahira McGee punched Deputy Stuart Prettel II in the face. Ayesha McGee is accused of pushing Deputy Caroline Yeargin, causing the officer to fall and strike her head on the concrete, Hoskins said. Both deputies suffered minor injuries.
Tahira McGee's right eye was swollen shut during the morning court hearing. Haselden said it was her understanding that the woman had to be subdued by multiple deputies after the alleged assault.
Haselden ordered $35,000 bail for Tahira McGee. Ayesha McGee, who is charged with a misdemeanor, was ordered jailed on a $1,087 bail.
Officers arrested a third person the morning of May 31. Maurice Antonio Malloy, 35, is charged with public disorderly conduct. He was released from the Charleston County jail by noon the same day, records show.
Crime-scene tape was still strung across several intersections around South Street the afternoon of May 31. Police officers guarded the roads in the neighborhood while investigators processed the scene. Residents milled about, chatting among themselves. A few waited to retrieve their cars, which were trapped inside the crime scene.
Yellow evidence markers dotted the roadway around America and South streets. An empty package of QuickClot Combat Gauze, medical gloves and bandage scissors were left outside the stoop of one residence. Red disposable cups and other trash littered the streets.
Paper tape measures were still stuck to the outside of another South Street home, framing a small bullet hole. The homeowner, who asked to remain anonymous, said she had been sitting on her couch when the gunfire erupted. She immediately dropped to the floor, the foam cushions of her couch swallowing a bullet that tore through her wall. Police officers who came to survey the damage told her she was lucky, the resident said.
Maurice Malloy. Charleston County Sheriff's Office/Provided
The shooting occurred near the road's intersection with America Street. Bookended by housing projects and lined with wood-frame, Victorian-era homes in various states of repair, America Street runs for about a mile and serves as a main artery through the East Side. South Street bisects that path, leading to bustling East Bay Street, where a U.S. Post Office complex sits perched on the corner.
The East Side has long struggled with violence that often went hand-in-hand with grinding poverty. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the heroin and crack cocaine trades drove a black-market economy that kept some afloat and lured a host of outsiders to the area. Young men lined street corners along America, brazenly hawking drugs in an open-air market that drew people through the region. Gun violence became a common occurrence.
The neighborhood underwent marked changes in the past decade, as Charleston’s soaring housing prices drove more and more college students, young professionals and would-be homebuyers into the East Side in search of affordable rents and mortgages.
Longtime Black residents have been pushed out by the rising prices that followed, leading to tensions over gentrification. Through it all, complaints about crime have been a nagging constant, as have suspicions that the culprits are coming from outside the community.
In April, a stray bullet struck a 9-year-old boy in the foot during a suspected drive-by shooting at America and Johnson streets.
Last July, five people were shot — one fatally — near Hanover and Johnson streets amid a dispute at Meeting Street Manor, a public housing complex owned by the Charleston Housing Authority.
In 2019, there were four fatal shootings between mid-June and late September, including a daylight August shooting on Hanover Street that claimed the life of a popular sous-chef at The Darling Oyster Bar. In the months after the shooting, about 125 new cameras were donated and installed to help curb crime and address the pervasive “no snitch” policy on the East Side.
Both Tecklenburg and Reynolds pledged action following the Memorial Day shooting, expressing anger over the recent bout of violence. Thoughts and prayers for the victims are necessary, but they aren't enough, Tecklenburg said.
Community activists including Justin Hunt (left) and Pastor Thomas Dixon (right) gathered to speak outside the Eastside Community Development Corporation on America Street on May 31, 2022, in Charleston in response to the shooting on Memorial Day. Grace Beahm Alford/Staff
He presented what he referred to as an actionable plan in response to the incident. He plans to:
• Ask City Council to put in place an "accountability measure" for landlords, like the one at the South Street property.
• Push state legislators to "give us a simple tool of making a graduated penalty system for offenders of gun laws."
• Seek "continued enforcement" of current gun laws, as well as the arrest of anyone involved in the mass shooting. Authorities must also promote responsible gun ownership, Tecklenburg said.
• Shut down unpermitted events in the city. Anyone who hosts a gathering of more than 25 people in a public space is required to request a permit from the Police Department, the mayor said.
• Review with city officials traffic measures on the East Side to improve police security and enforcement.
• Examine law enforcement's response to the shooting.
Following remarks from the mayor and police chief, local activists gathered at a park near the crime scene for a separate press conference.
Justin Hunt, of the South Carolina Black Activist Coalition, said Tecklenburg should not waste his time with his suggestions and should instead meet with community members to come up with solutions.
“How about we have a meeting with the community leaders right now, or tomorrow or this weekend?” Hunt said. “I want you to talk to people you’ve never talked to before.”
Marcus McDonald, of Charleston Black Lives Matter, pleaded for people to seek mental health help for the emotional wounds caused by this and other shootings.
“It’s a continuous trauma,” McDonald said.
The shooting is eerily reminiscent to one that occurred barely a year ago in North Charleston's Deas Hill neighborhood. A 14-year-old girl was killed and 14 others injured after a shootout erupted at an unpermitted block party and nighttime concert on May 22, 2021.
Charleston Police crime scene technicians bag evidence from the scene on South Street, near America Street, on May 31, 2022, where several people, including a city police officer, were injured in a shooting shortly before midnight in Charleston’s East Side neighborhood. according to authorities. Brad Nettles/Staff
Gun violence has become a startlingly common occurrence throughout the Lowcountry: There were 34 homicides in North Charleston involving firearms in 2021, compared with 19 cases the year prior. So far this year, 15 homicides have been counted, all of which involved guns. In Charleston, 16 homicides were reported each of the past two years, a sharp increase for a city where killings usually hover around 10. Again, guns caused almost all of those deaths.
Just last month, dozens of gunshots rang out next to a baseball field during a youth sporting event at Pepperhill Park in North Charleston. No one was injured in the melee, which prompted swift action from city officials.
Reach Steve Garrison at 843-607-1052. Follow him on Twitter @SteveGarrisonDT.
Steve Garrison covers breaking news and public safety. He's a native of Chicago who previously covered courts and crime in Wisconsin, New Mexico and Indiana. He studied journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the University of Missouri.
Jocelyn Grzeszczak covers crime and public safety in the Charleston area. She previously wrote breaking news and features for Newsweek and The News-Press.
The Post and Courier 148 Williman Street Charleston, SC 29403
News tips/online questions: newstips@postandcourier.com
Delivery/subscription questions: subserve@postandcourier.com
, Post and Courier, an Evening Post Publishing Newspaper Group. All rights reserved.