Ridgeland man pleads guilty 5 years after fatally shooting man over stolen dirt bike
A 20-year-old Ridgeland man was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to fatally shooting an 18-year-old five years ago, a 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office release said.
Jamarie Shekel Garner pleaded guilty Tuesday to voluntary manslaughter a week before his scheduled trial.
On Nov. 14, 2015, Garner, then 15, shot Jamonte Markel Simmons, 18, after they got into an “altercation” over a stolen dirt bike on a dirt path in the woods off Rice Shire Road, the release said.
Garner “grabbed a loaded shotgun from his brother’s hands and fired at Simmons,” it said.
“What would have been normally handled with a fist fight quickly escalated and ended with one young man lying dead in a pathway,” 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office prosecutor Dustin Whetsel said in the release. “Two families are forever and irrevocably affected.”
Circuit Judge Brooks P. Goldsmith accepted the plea at the Beaufort County Courthouse.
