John Wood was sentenced to death by the State of South Carolina for the murder of trooper Eric Nicholson. According to court documents John Wood after being pulled over for a traffic violation would shoot and kill trooper Eric Nicholson. John Wood would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Trooper Eric Nicholson, while patrolling I-85 in the Greenville area, called to inform the dispatcher that he was going to stop a moped. After Nicholson activated his lights and siren, appellant, who was riding the moped, did not immediately stop. Two other troopers subsequently heard Nicholson scream on the radio and they rushed to the scene whereupon they found Nicholson had been shot five times. The driver’s side window of Nicholson’s car was completely shattered. Both of his pistols were secured in their holsters. Eight shell casings were found at the scene.
There were several eyewitnesses to Nicholson’s murder. Witnesses recalled seeing a moped being followed by a trooper with activated lights and siren. The moped took the off-ramp to leave I-85 and then took a right down a frontage road. As the two vehicles got on the frontage road, the trooper sped up to get beside the moped and then veered to the left to stop at an angle against a raised median in order to block the moped’s progress. The moped came to a stop close to the driver’s side window.
Immediately upon stopping, appellant stood up over the moped and raised his arm towards the driver’s side window of Trooper Nicholson’s car. Some witnesses saw a weapon in appellant’s hand and heard gunshots. After firing several shots in the driver’s side window of Nicholson’s car, appellant backed the moped up, turned it around, and fled at a high rate of speed.
After the shooting, some concerned citizens (the Wheelers) chased appellant. Appellant entered a parking lot and then jumped into the passenger’s seat of a Jeep, driven by a woman. The Wheelers subsequently called in the tag number to police.
Once law enforcement officers began chasing the Jeep, appellant opened fire on the pursuing officers. One officer was struck in the face by a bullet fragment. He survived the injury. After subsequently hijacking a truck, appellant was eventually stopped and taken into custody.
The jury convicted appellant of murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime and sentenced him to death.
Lous Winkler was sentenced to death by the State of South Carolina for the murder of Rebekah Grainger Winkler . According to court documents Louis Winkler would kidnap and sexually assault Rebekah Grainger Winkler. After he was arrested for these crimes he would be let out on jail on bond and proceed to murder Rebekah Grainger Winkler . Louis Winkler would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Appellant kidnapped and sexually assaulted Rebekah Grainger Winkler (Victim) on October 10, 2005, five months before Victim was murdered.2 That evening, Appellant’s car was spotted behind the Seacoast Medical Center (Seacoast). Victim’s car was found off the road in some trees and appeared to have been wrecked. There was blood on both of Victim’s car seats, around the center console, and on the interior panel of the passenger’s side door. The Horry County Police Department activated its dog team in an attempt to locate two missing persons. Victim was later found next to Stephen’s Crossroads, which is where the magistrate’s complex and library is located.
Phyllis Richardson (Richardson) arrived at the parking lot at Stephen’s Crossroads around 7:30 a.m. on October 11, 2005, and saw a woman walking in the parking lot being followed by a man. Richardson noted the woman looked distraught and was acting confused, and that the man’s hands were in the air as if he were raging and irritated. Shortly after Richardson entered her office, she saw the woman from the parking lot on the phone in her office building. The woman’s hair was matted and tangled with some bald spots. Richardson later learned the woman making the call was Victim. Curtis Thompson was the first officer to arrive at the building, and noticed some of Victim’s hair looked like it had been ripped out, and she had black eyes, abrasions, and other scratches.
Victim was transported to Seacoast by EMS where Lisa Gore (Gore), a nurse at Seacoast, tended to Victim and noted her injuries to the left eye, some swelling in the jaw area, bruising around the neck, a fractured nose, an upper lip injury, redness under her right eye, corneal abrasions, multiple bruises and contusions, a bite mark to the face, and a large amount of hair removed from her head. A sexual assault kit was collected from Victim. The DNA found in the rectal and vaginal swabs from the sexual assault kit matched Appellant’s DNA.
On October 11, 2005, Louis Winkler was arrested for criminal sexual conduct, first degree, assault and battery with intent to kill, and kidnapping. Bond was initially denied; however, at a second bond hearing, Appellant’s bond was set at $150,000 and he was required to wear an electronic monitor while out on bond. At a third bond hearing, Appellant’s bond was amended to allow him to remove his electronic monitor for two hours so he could seek employment between the hours of 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. Appellant was out of jail on bond on the day Victim was murdered.
At around 5:30 p.m. March 6, 2006, Louis Winkler kicked in the door to Victim’s condominium. Appellant knocked Victim’s son, Jonathan G. (Jonathan), onto the ground and then shot Victim once in the face at point blank range. According to the forensic pathologist who conducted Victim’s autopsy, death occurred instantly. Appellant then walked over and pointed the gun at Jonathan. Shortly thereafter, Appellant left the condominium.
Louis Winkler hid in the woods for two weeks. When police apprehended Appellant,3 they recovered a Jennings .380 pistol from his right front pants pocket. Five live rounds were found in the pistol, but there was not a live round in the port. During a full search of Appellant, police recovered eighteen rounds of .380 ammunition, a guard lock blade knife, and a wallet. In the wallet, there was a newspaper clipping about the shooting and murder.
Louis Winkler was tried and found guilty of murder, first-degree burglary, and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature. At trial, the State sought to establish two statutory aggravating circumstances: (1) the murder was committed during the commission of a burglary; and (2) the murder was of a witness or potential witness committed at any time during the criminal process for the purpose of impeding or deterring prosecution of any crime. S.C.Code Ann. § 16-3-20(C)(a)(1)(c), (C)(a)(11) (2003 & Supp.2009). The jury recommended that Louis Winkler be sentenced to death.
James Wilson was sentenced to death by the State of South Carolina for a school shooting that left two students dead. According to court documents James Wilson would enter Oakland Elementary School where he would kill Shequila Bradley and Tequila Thomas, both eight years old. Seven other students were injured as well as two teachers. James Wilson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Ellie Hodge smiled at the shooter as he walked in.
The first-grade teacher sat across from one of her students, keeping a watchful eye on the bustling cafeteria. A hundred students sat at their tables, eating their lunches that September afternoon in 1988.
“I thought he was a parent,” Hodge said, still incredulous years later at her naivete.”A young parent, but I was new.”
It was her sixth week at Oakland Elementary School. She didn’t know all the parents yet. So, she smiled.
That’s when 19-year-old James Wilson Jr. opened fire.
Hodge doesn’t remember the gun; she only remembers being shot. The bullet entered the side of her hand. The student across the table looked at her, wide-eyed. Hodge, confused, thought the little boy had thrown a ketchup packet at her.
Back then, the term “school shooting” didn’t exist. It was unimaginable, which is why it took Hodge a moment to realize the situation.
Then she started to scream for students to run.
Lashonda Burt sat further down Hodge’s table when the chaos began. The 7-year-old was shot and immediately blacked out. When she came to, she searched for her teacher.
“I remember Miss Hodge waving at me to come to her,” Burt-Reeder, now married and still living in Greenwood, said. “She was actually shot again in that moment.”
The second bullet entered Hodge’s right shoulder and lodged in her left, bypassing her spine by millimeters.
A cafeteria employee pulled Hodge, Lashonda, and another student into a cafeteria freezer. Hodge told the children to run. Lashonda fled out a side door with other kids, not realizing she had been shot until someone saw the blood on her clothing.
“When I looked down at my arm and my shirt, I saw all the blood,” she said, recalling the moments before she passed out again.
Inside the building, Wilson reloaded the handgun – a nine-shot .22 caliber revolver he stole from his grandparents – in a bathroom down the hall from the cafeteria.
He soon moved to a third-grade classroom and began shooting, killing eight-year old Shequila Bradley and injuring six others, including Tequila Thomas.
Tequila would never regain consciousness.
Shots, then panic
Across town, Chief Jim Coursey sat in his office at the Greenwood Police Department. The scanner crackled as he spoke with a SLED agent. The chief’s ears perked up.
“I remember telling him, ‘I got to go, there’s been a shooting at one of my schools,” Coursey said.
Maj. Urban Mitchell heard the same call in his car as he drove around town. He arrived within seconds on the school grounds, which had filled with dozens of cars and frantic parents.
Three decades later, Maj. Mitchell marvels at how quickly ordinary people arrived at the scene.
“Believe it or not, word had still gotten out, and there were parents arriving just immediately after I got there,” he said.
Mitchell rushed around the back of the school where he found another investigator holding Wilson at gunpoint. The officer had captured the shooter after he climbed out a bathroom window. The police chief drove up as the two took Wilson into custody.
Both describe the scene as chaotic; sheriff’s deputies and SLED agents rushing in, teachers and children bleeding, parents screaming for answers.
Telephone calls heightened the madness; parents who didn’t make it to the scene frantically called the school. A secretary from SLED, along with Coursey’s personal assistant, came to Oakland Elementary and helped answer the calls.
“To hear that panic,” Mitchell said, trailing off in thought. He then summed it up in one word: “Unbelievable.”
A close-knit community that still remembers
The names of Shequila Bradley and Tequila Thomas are etched into granite markers in a small memorial garden behind the school, which now bears the name Eleanor S. Rice Elementary in honor of the principal who guided the school out of the tragedy.
The town renamed the school in her honor after she died in 2010. A plaque outside the school’s front office describes Rice’s leadership in the shooting’s aftermath as “heroic.” Coursey doesn’t know what the town would have done without her guidance.
September 26, 2018, will mark 30 years since Wilson opened fire and took Shequila and Tequila from this world. Wilson had no ties to Oakland Elementary. He lived with his grandparents, and relatives described him as a “hyper-recluse” to The State newspaper. He is incarcerated on death row at Kirkland Correctional Institution in Columbia.
In those three decades, not much has changed about the city of Greenwood. It currently has 23,222 residents and counting, with major chains and stores in its center, up from its 21,613 population in 1980. Tiny shops line Main Street in an renovated arts and culture district now known as Uptown Greenwood. Their owners remember customers’ names, their food orders and family ties.
“It’s a close-knit community,” Mitchell said.
It’s a community that still remembers the two youngsters who lost their lives and those who still carry psychic wounds from that day.
One Greenwood business owner teared up as he talked about Kat Finkbeiner, the physical education teacher who confronted Wilson as he reloaded in the bathroom. When she tried to stop him, he shot her in the mouth and hand.
Finkbeiner survived and was hailed as a hero.
Even three decades later, those who witnessed the aftermath of the shooting continue to live with the effects.
“This was a bad day,” Coursey said. He took a moment to collect himself before he admitted, “I still dream about it.”
Coursey, now retired after six years on the force, calls himself “a big Second Amendment person,” but he isn’t blind to the issue of guns in American society.
“What’s happening now…we’ve got to make some changes,” he said.
Hodge said she struggles to listen to news about the recent school shooting in Parkland, Florida that claimed the lives of 17 students. She has physical reminders: her left hand that fails to make a closed fist, and her PTSD that overrides her senses from time to time.
For the most part, however, Hodge can remember the tragedy without issue.
“It helps to talk about it,” she said.
Burt-Reeder flinches every time there is a call from her children’s school in the middle of the day. Her shoulder aches from time to time, but she views it as a reminder; if she hadn’t been eating at the time of the shot, the bullet would have gone through her neck.
Emotions run high whenever another school shooting leads the national news. There is a sense of being forgotten, the name of Oakland Elementary School lost in the modern wave of school shooting tragedies.
Even if the rest of the world forgets, Greenwood can’t.
“I forgive him for it, but I will never forget that he did that to me,” Burt-Reeder said.
Andres Torres was sentenced to death by the State of South Carolina for a double murder: Ray and Ann Emery. According to court documents Andres Torres broke into the victim’s home and beat to death Ray and Ann Emery with a hammer. Andres Torres would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
A man sentenced to death for a brutal double homicide was back in court Monday claiming that he received ineffective counsel and did not receive a fair trial. Andres “Tony” Torres, 33, was found guilty in October 2008 of murdering Ray and Ann Emery. The Drayton couple was found beaten in their bedroom on May 11, 2007, after Union County authorities found their van wrecked with their belongings inside. Authorities say the murder weapon was a hammer. Torres also was convicted of two counts of armed robbery and one count each of attempt to burn, first-degree burglary and first-degree criminal sexual conduct. Ann Emery was sexually assaulted. Gasoline was poured throughout the couple’s home at 12 Montgomery St., and four burners on the stove and oven broiler were set to high. Six guards escorted Torres into Circuit Court Judge Derham Cole’s courtroom Monday. One of Torres’ attorneys, Hank Ehlies, told Cole that during the sentencing phase, the judge who presided over the capital case was not clear that the jury was recommending the sentence and that the jury was the sole sentencing authority. Senior Assistant Attorney General Melody Brown told Cole the original lawyers did not object. The jury was correctly informed, and jurors knew they were deciding Torres’ fate, the attorney said. Cole denied the motion for a summary judgment and said jurors would have known they were recommending Torres’ sentence. Ehlies argued that Torres’ original defense lawyers were ineffective for failing to object to the manner in which the law was charged to the jury. He said there was no strategic reasoning for the defense to remain silent on the matter. Several witnesses also testified Monday. Former Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office detective Reed Lindsay, who was lead investigator on the case, testified it was his understanding that Torres had an altercation with Ray Emery’s adopted son, Chuck Emery, before the deaths. According to testimony, Torres threatened to kill Chuck Emery and his family. Torres’ defense team suggested that another person was involved in the murder and that investigators never looked at other possible suspects. Lindsay, under questioning from Ehlies, said at no point in the investigation did he find anything that pointed to another person’s involvement. “The person who committed the crime is sitting over there,” Lindsay said, nodding to Torres, who sat shackled in a green prison-issued jumpsuit. Lindsay said he located Torres at a relative’s home, where he found shoes in a washing machine. He said the tread on the shoes matched bloody shoeprints tracked through the house. Lindsay acknowledged that there were unmatched shoeprints, but said that was to be expected because original responders did not know what they would find at the crime scene. Lindsay said only a “select few” knew how the couple was killed, but said Torres told him during an interview that he knew the couple had been beaten to death. Lindsay said Torres’ semen also was found at the crime scene, but could not recollect collecting DNA samples from others to compare to forensic evidence. Ann Emery’s daughter, Crystal Williamson, testified that Torres’ defense attorney did not contact her about the case. “I never thought Tony Torres did this by himself,” Williamson said. Lt. Tony Ivey with the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office said in a written statement that, “The evidence in this case did not lead investigators to any other individuals having been involved in this case. Had the evidence pointed to the involvement of anyone else they would have been charged along with Mr. Torres.“ The hearing resumes at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.
Gary Terry was sentenced to death by the State of South Carolina for a sexual assault and murder of 47 year old Urai Jackson. According to court documents Gary Terry broke into the home and would sexually assault and murder Urai Jackson before robbing the home. Gary Terry would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
The victim in this case, 47 year old Urai Jackson, was found beaten to death in her Lexington County home on May 24, 1994. The window on the carport door to her home had been broken out and the telephone wires had been pulled from the phone box. Victim’s mostly nude body was found in the living room, and semen was found in her vagina. She had several blunt trauma wounds to the head, and a number of defensive wound injuries. The cause of death was blunt trauma with skull fracture and brain injury.
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