Man charged in shooting of 16-year-old girlfriend in Ridgeland motel. He called 911
The 32-year-old Ridgeland man who called 911 saying he found his teenage girlfriend shot dead in a Jasper County motel room on Labor Day weekend was charged Tuesday with her killing.
Brian Jemal Redding faces one count of murder, one count of possession of a weapon in a violent crime and one count of possession of a weapon by a convicted felon, according to a S.C. Law Enforcement Division news release.
Redding is accused of killing “his girlfriend, Cypress Noonan, by shooting her in the forehead, with a SCCY 9 mm handgun,” according to arrest warrants issued Monday.
Noonan, 16, of Ridgeland was found dead in a room at the Forest Motel near downtown Ridgeland on Sept. 6, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend.
The Ridgeland Police Department first responded to the scene but turned the investigation over to SLED.
Limited details surrounding Noonan’s death and the criminal investigation have been made public by authorities, but 911 audio obtained by The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette sheds some light on the events surrounding the death.
What happened on Labor Day weekend?
Police responded to the Forest Motel on South Jacob Smart Boulevard the morning of Sept. 6, according to a pair of 911 calls obtained by the newspapers from Jasper County Emergency Services through public records request.
The first call came at 9:46 a.m. from a distraught and sobbing Redding.
“I’m at (the) Forest Motel in Ridgeland,” he said on the call. “My girlfriend … she’s shot in the head.”
“Who shot her, do you know?” the dispatcher asked.
Redding said he did not know, but that Noonan had an “altercation” earlier with a woman at the nearby Siesta Motel.
Redding left Room 22 at 6 a.m., he said, proceeding to map out his whereabouts to the operator. He told her he had driven to Beaufort and then to Bluffton, picking up and dropping off another woman at work and getting a cousin before returning to the hotel around 8 a.m.
At that point, Noonan was sleeping, Redding said. He reported getting his wallet and then driving to Pineland. On his way back, he called Noonan multiple times but she did not answer, Redding said.
After speaking with “the landlord” on his way in, Redding said he returned to the room.
“I came in and I see her just sitting up like with her head back and she had a hole in her head,” he told the operator.
Giving his name, Redding explained that “everybody knows she’s my girlfriend” and that he and Noonan had lived together for eight months.
As a police officer arrived, the operator instructed Redding to speak with him. The call ended at 9:52 a.m.
Two minutes after it was first placed, at 9:48 a.m., a woman identifying herself as “the office at the Forest Motel” also called 911. “We have a problem at one of the rooms,” she said, but did not provide additional details.
A Ridgeland police officer arrived shortly after and talked to Redding. The officer went into the room to find Noonan “in the bed unresponsive with what appeared to be (a) gunshot wound to the head,” according to a Ridgeland Police Department report.
The report said Jasper County Fire Rescue arrived and attempted life-saving efforts.
Family members called for Redding’s arrest, mourn Noonan’s death
Redding is being held at the Jasper County Detention Center.
Because he is charged with murder, his bond will not be considered until he can go in front of a circuit judge, which can take some time, according to Jeff Kidd, a spokesperson for the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
The Solicitor’s Office will be prosecuting the case.
Noonan, born in Beaufort, leaves behind a large family, including five sisters.
In social media posts, family members and friends began calling for Redding’s arrest in the days after Noonan’s death. They also mourned her passing.
“Losing you is the worst pain that I have ever felt in my life,” wrote Noonan’s mother, in a public Facebook post three days after her death.
“I have lost loved ones but yours hit different,” she wrote. “You still had your whole life ahead of you.”
