Beaufort woman sentenced to 11 years for role in killings of St. Helena man, nephew
On Nov. 22 2017, St. Helena Island resident Robert Blanding was found dead in a Lady’s Island drainage ditch with gunshot wounds.
Authorities found the body of his nephew, Chaz Blanding, in a ditch on St. Helena, a week and a half later. Five people, all under the age of 21, were charged with murder.
More than three years after the killings, one of the five was sentenced this week — Symone Alyse Jones, now 23, of Beaufort.
A 14th Circuit judge sentenced Jones on Tuesday to 11 years in prison on two counts of accessory to murder, according to court records.
She pleaded guilty in October 2019.
What happened?
The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office originally charged Jones with two counts of murder after she turned herself in to investigators.
Then 20 years old, she “facilitated the commission of the crime by picking up the victim and driving him to F&B Road” in the early morning hours of Nov. 21, 2017, according to an arrest warrant.
She was present when the victim was shot, and she left with the others accused of shooting him, the warrant states. Law enforcement officers found the body of Robert Blanding, 24, on F&B Road the following day.
While police originally charged Jones with murder, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office indicted Jones on a different charge — accessory to murder — after looking at the facts of the case.
The Solicitor’s Office declined to provide more details on the case or the motives of those charged.
That’s because two other accused individuals are awaiting sentencing and one is awaiting trial, said spokesperson Jeff Kidd.
The Sheriff’s Office declined for the same reason.
Co-defendants
One of the men charged alongside Jones, Channon Preston of Lady’s Island, saw a different outcome.
In November 2020, prosecutors with the Solicitor’s Office dropped charges against Preston, according to documents.
Issues arose during the trial of Gerard Daise of Beaufort, another co-defendant charged in the Blandings’ murders.
Witnesses for the prosecution in Daise’s case lost their credibility.
Exactly how is unclear: Kidd, with the Solicitor’s Office, said the agency could not comment on what happened in Daise’s case because it is still pending.
Those witnesses were meant to be used in the case against Preston, documents show.
“[We] became aware with some problems with their credibility,” Kidd said in November. “Without those witnesses, we didn’t really have a choice but to drop the charges.”
The Solicitor’s Office dropped the charges against Preston on Nov. 11, 2020, and he was released from house arrest.
Eight days later, a shooting on St. Helena occurred. The Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office charged Preston with murder and accused him of killing a 30-year-old man in St. Helena.
He is incarcerated in the Beaufort County Detention Center on the new murder charge, jail records show.
What’s left in court?
The cases of three individuals remain pending in the Blanding case:
- Gerard Daise, 21, is awaiting a new trial. Court records show in January 2021 he was released on bond on the condition he lives at a home in Columbia and is restricted from traveling in Beaufort County.
- Raheem Bennett, 19, of St. Helena is awaiting sentencing. He is currently detained in the Beaufort County jail.
- Nashon Pringle, 21, of St. Helena is also awaiting sentencing and detained in the jail.
Bennett and Pringle were booked into jail in November 2017 and have been there since.
After 19-year-old Chaz Blanding was reported missing three years ago, a friend of his told the Beaufort Gazette newspaper that Chaz and his uncle were like brothers.
The friend said Chaz was “super smart,” and that Robert acted like an older sibling to them both, always making sure that their “heads were screwed on tight.”
“Robert was like the backbone of everybody,” said Diamond Henderson, one of Chaz’s former Beaufort High School classmates who said he hung out with both men. “He pushed us to do stuff that we never knew we could do.”
