SC man indicted in federal court after years of weapons charges by Jasper Co. cops
A federal grand jury indicted a Garnett, S.C., man Wednesday on weapons charges brought by Jasper County police, according to court documents.
Aaron Taylor, 26, faces three counts of possession of firearms by a convicted felon, according to documents filed in U.S. District Court of South Carolina, Beaufort Division.
A criminal complaint, authored by an FBI special agent, alleges Taylor “has demonstrated a continued involvement with gun violence and has escalated his level and frequency of violence.”
Prosecutors argue that Taylor has been arrested 16 times since 2016 “and has violated almost every bond he has ever been given,” according to a filing from the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Taylor first pleaded guilty to two gun charges in January 2017. Those charges were brought by the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office. His sentence was downgraded from three years in prison to 18 months on probation, S.C. court records show.
The prosecutors’ filing states Taylor was arrested on charges of threatening with a firearm in May 2019 and admitted in an interview with the Hardeeville Police Department and the FBI that he “was a felon and not allowed to possess firearms.”
He was put on probation.
Months later, after being charged with two more offenses, Taylor was charged by Hardeeville Police in December 2019 with attempted murder and possession of a weapon, according to the filing.
Court records show a conviction was not pursued.
In July of 2020, he was arrested on a federal criminal complaint while out on seven state bonds.
The arrest stemmed from an incident a month before, when Jasper County Sheriff’s Office deputies responded to a home in Garnett to a call of a fight and shots fired, according to reports filed by the responding officers.
Two deputies found Taylor walking in and out of the home. When they put him in handcuffs, deputies saw a cut on his hand, the report states.
A deputy searched his car and found a magazine and pistol with blood on them and spent shell casings on the ground, according to the report.
On the way to the hospital, deputies wrote that Taylor began damaging the patrol car and said he would return the next day to “shoot up the place and when Law Enforcement responds shoot at all of you and hope that I hit all of you,” the report says.
Taylor was ordered detained until trial, a filing states. He is currently being held in the Charleston County Detention Center, jail records show.
Two messages left for Charles Cochran, a federal public defender representing Taylor, on Thursday were not returned.
Taylor will appear on video for his arraignment on Tuesday in federal court in Charleston.
