The deceased man linked to death of 6-year-old Cayce girl was a Bluffton High graduate
CORRECTION: A previous version of this article had an incorrect headline, which has been updated.
The 30-year-old Cayce man found dead Thursday — and linked to the disappearance and death of 6-year-old Faye Swetlik — was a 2007 graduate of Bluffton High School and had attended University of South Carolina Beaufort until 2008, spokespeople from the Beaufort County School District and USC confirmed Friday.
Coty Scott Taylor was found dead in his home Thursday morning shortly after police had discovered “a critical piece of evidence” in his trash, according to Sgt. Evan Antley of Cayce Department of Public Safety in a press conference Friday.
Faye’s body was found that same morning in a wooded area close to her home, which was next door to Taylor’s townhouse. The girl was last seen playing in her yard on the afternoon of Feb. 10, according to previous reporting by The State newspaper.
Details about Taylor’s death were not available Friday. An autopsy is scheduled for Saturday to determine the cause and manner of his death, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said.
School district spokesperson Jim Foster said Friday that Taylor started at Bluffton High in 2003 and graduated four years later.
“He had an outstanding academic record and no disciplinary issues,” Foster said.
After high school, Taylor enrolled at USCB in the fall and transferred to USC in Columbia the next year, USC spokesperson Jeff Stensland said in an email Friday.
He withdrew from USC in the spring of 2009, and there are no records of Taylor graduating from there, Stensland said.
Taylor later worked as a manager of a local Jimmy John’s restaurant until 2015, corporate officials from the company’s human resources office in Raleigh confirmed Friday. But operations manager Molly Wilson said that she didn’t know which store or the length of his employment.
She sent condolences to Swetlik’s loved ones on behalf of the company.
“We hate to hear that for the family,” Wilson said. “We’re very sorry.”
Taylor and Faye’s homes were less than 150 feet apart, but he was not a relative or friend, according to The State newspaper.
Antley said Taylor had no criminal record and “was not known to law enforcement.”
On Friday, Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Maj. Bob Bromage said, “It does not appear that (Taylor) had any contact with the sheriff’s office while he lived here.”
Taylor lived on Sugaree Drive in the Windy Lake neighborhood of Bluffton and was an honors student at Bluffton High School, according to a records search and 2007 reports in The Island Packet.
In February 2007, he was part of the Bluffton High robotics team that finished second in an Orangeburg state competition with a robot named “Fear the Evil of Computer Love.”
Taylor was the robot’s driver and told a Packet reporter at the time, “The entire match is pretty much based on the autonomous part.”
During his senior year, Taylor was a member of the Model United Nations team and participated in Georgia Southern University’s 36th annual Model United Nation’s competition, the Packet reported in 2007.
Taylor graduated in the top 10 percent of his class, according to a Hilton Head Island-Bluffton Chamber of Commerce advertisement in The Island Packet congratulating him and other students from high schools on Hilton Head and in Bluffton.
Jeff Wilkinson and Isabella Cueto of The State contributed to this story
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This story was originally published February 14, 2020 at 4:36 PM.