‘Equally culpable’: SC Supreme Court upholds conviction in Hilton Head child’s murder
The S.C. Supreme Court last week denied the appeal of a Beaufort County man who was one of three convicted of murdering an 8-year-old playing in his grandmother’s yard on Hilton Head Island in 2012.
The man, Aaron Young Jr., his father, Aaron Young Sr. were in a “running gun battle” with Tyrone Robinson on Allen Road when Khalil Singleton was fatally shot in the crossfire, according to a 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office news release.
Robinson fired the fatal bullet, but all three were convicted of the child’s murder because of a centuries-old legal concept called “mutual combat,” the release said.
Mutual combat holds every participant in a shootout responsible for all of the bullets fired.
In his appeal, Young Jr.’s attorney had argued that mutual combat is limited to self-defense and that it did not apply to the boy since he was not a combatant.
During the trials, Solicitor Duffie Stone successfully argued the doctrine applied even if the victim was not involved in the shooting.
The state appeals court and the S.C. Supreme Court agreed.
The Supreme Court’s recent decision said that when two or more people “engage in combat via a reckless shootout, they collectively trigger an escalating chain reaction that creates a risk to any human life falling within the field of fire,” therefore Young Jr. and Robinson are “equally culpable” for Khalil’s death.
With this decision, the rarely cited doctrine is now recognized as state law, the release said. Stone used the doctrine in the Youngs’ murder trials after assistant solicitor Hunter Swanson discovered it in a 1918 court decision. The Solicitor’s Office believes that it hadn’t been used again until this case.
“This law would ensure no one who participated in bringing on this tragedy would escape accountability,” Stone said in the release.
The shooting and trials
On Sept. 1, 2012, Robinson drove to the Youngs’ home, fought with the father and fired a gun, then sped away in his car. The Youngs grabbed a semi-automatic pistol and ammunition, got into their truck and began searching for Robinson, according to previous reporting by The Island Packet.
They found Robinson near his home, and gunfire erupted on Allen Road.
When the shooting began, Khalil was playing with other children in his grandmother’s yard.
Neighbors called for their children to come inside, and two kids did. Two others, one of which was Khalil, stopped to put on their shoes. Soon after, a bullet struck his left torso during the crossfire.
Several people screamed “Tyrone did it, Tyrone did it,” when Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office deputies and emergency responders arrived.
Robinson and the Youngs were questioned and arrested that evening. The next month, they were all indicted by a grand jury on murder charges.
Originally the men were to be tried together, but Judge Thomas Cooper halted the trial after Young Sr.’s attorney asked that an interview between him and investigators be excluded.
Young Sr. testified that he helped the Sheriff’s Office recover his son’s handgun from the shooting. He said an investigator told him that he and his son would be exonerated if he helped, but he would face a lengthy jail time if he didn’t.
A forensic pathologist testified that Young Sr. was coerced.
The judge later ruled each defendant would be tried separately.
Robinson was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole after being found guilty of murder on Sept. 19, 2014.
Young Jr. was convicted of murder and attempted murder on Feb. 25, 2015. He was sentenced to the minimum punishment of 30 years. A state appeals court upheld the conviction in August 2018.
“I take no pleasure in watching him to go to jail,” Khalil’s father, Kareem Singleton, said after Young Jr.’s conviction. “I’d rather have my son back, but I thank God for the verdict.”
On Aug. 12, 2015, Young Sr. was convicted of the same charges and sentenced to 30 years, the same as his son.
All three men remain incarcerated in S.C. Department of Corrections prisons.
This story was originally published February 7, 2020 at 3:28 PM.
