Copyright postandcourier
Willie’s was the site of an afterparty following a Battery Creek High School alumni event earlier in the day. Hundreds attended the celebration, with many gathering outside a lattice fence along the edge of the restaurant’s front patio. Beaufort County Sheriff P.J. Tanner said that reports from the scene indicated that as many as 700 people were in and around the restaurant, including on neighboring properties, when shooting broke out shortly before 1 a.m. The county coroner identified the four people who were shot and killed at the scene: Kashawn Glaze, a 22-year-old man from Beaufort; Chiraad Smalls, a 33-year-old man from Beaufort; A’Shan’tek Danielle Milledge, a 22-year-old woman from Burton; and Amos Ramon Gary, a 54-year-old man from St. Helena. There have been no arrests made related to the shooting at Willie’s to date. Tanner held a news conference on Oct. 15, during which time he stated that it was likely that multiple shooters exchanged gunfire. “We know that there were two, possibly three within this crowd that had an ongoing feud with each other,” Tanner said. At the same time, Tanner lamented a lack of cooperation by potential witnesses. Despite the hundreds of people at the scene, he had yet to speak to a single witness willing to name the shooters. It is, he said, a common situation encountered while investigating violent crimes in the county. The reluctance to get involved is often attributed to fear of retaliation. Little new information regarding the incident has come to light since that press conference. To assist with the investigation, the FBI’s Columbia field office created a website to collect digital evidence like photos or cell phone video from witnesses. Witnesses can upload any digital evidence to www.fbi.gov/sthelenamassshooting.
