Suspect recharged in shooting death of Pineland man
More than four years after a Pineland man was shot and killed while babysitting his sister's children, a suspect in the homicide is behind bars.
But it's not the first time Jonathan Lilly has been charged with murder and kidnapping in connection with the slaying of 24-year-old Joseph Kilpatrick.
He was first arrested in September 2011 at the age of 17, just two months after Kilpatrick was held against his will and then fatally shot inside a Jenny Green apartment in Hardeeville.
Since then, the case has been marked by lost evidence, accusations of wrongdoing by a police officer and the transfer of the case in 2014 to the S.C. Law Enforcement Division, which in turn scrapped the charges against Lilly and two other suspects.
With the missing evidence located during an audit of the Hardeeville Police Department and SLED's investigation complete, prosecutor's moved forward with re-charging only Lilly, who has been in jail since May in connection with another violent crime.
A grand jury indicted him in Kilpatrick's death on Dec. 17, according to Jasper County court records and 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone.
Lilly is accused of breaking into a Thatcher Road apartment on July 15, 2011, and playing a role in Kilpatrick's death.
The victim's sister's three children, all under 10 years old, were uninjured, according to Hardeeville police.
Two other men were arrested in the slaying -- Daquan Aki Aiken of Bluffton and Kenneth Tremont Anderson of Ridgeland -- but Stone said he has not sought to re-charge either.
"We don't have evidence to show that they should be," Stone said Thursday.
SLED also cleared a former Hardeeville police officer of having any familial connection to suspects in the case. While investigators previously said there was an allegation Alexis Webber was related to Aiken or Anderson, Stone said Thursday that she was only distantly related to an individual who was not a suspect in Kilpatrick's death.
Lilly remains in jail awaiting a bond hearing in January.
He is also charged in Jasper County with attempted murder, kidnapping and criminal conspiracy following an unrelated arrest in the spring, for which he was not granted a bond. He is currently being held for Jasper County at the Beaufort County Detention Center.
A month earlier, he'd pleaded guilty to speeding more than 25 mph over the speed limit in Hardeeville.
Stone would not say whether other suspects are sought in Kilpatrick's shooting and declined to comment further.
Follow reporter Rebecca Lurye on Twitter at twitter.com/IPBG_Rebecca.
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This story was originally published December 24, 2015 at 10:55 AM with the headline "Suspect recharged in shooting death of Pineland man."