Police charge 24-year-old in robbery and assault on man who worked for him in Beaufort
A Lady’s Island man was charged after police say he assaulted a homeless man in Beaufort who used to work for him, according to a report from the Beaufort Police Department.
Kenneth Warnke, 24, of Lady’s Island was charged with assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and criminal conspiracy Wednesday, according to the Beaufort County Detention Center jail log.
Around 4:31 p.m. on Dec. 2, officers from the Beaufort Police Department responded to the intersection of Hamar and Green streets after receiving a call about a fight between two men in a car and a man on a bicycle, the police report said. When police arrived, the man on the bicycle was a block away and had called 911, according to the report.
A witness told police they saw two men in a black Hummer trying to run over a man on his bicycle. The men in the car were carrying a handgun and a baseball bat, the witness said. Another witness told police they saw a man getting out of the car to hit the man on the bicycle with the bat. One of the men, according to the report, hit the man on the bicycle in the chest with the bat before he was able to run away towards Boundary Street.
The man told police that he worked for the two allegedly involved in the assault, he said, and that they owed him $70 for two days of work. The man was doing yard work for the two, according to Capt. George Erdel of the Beaufort Police Department.
The man told police that the Hummer had followed him before the assault. He told police that Warnke was holding the handgun, police said in the report, but he did not point it at him.
The two took his cellphone and an “undisclosed amount of money,” according to the report. A bicycle, wool hat, glasses and a backpack were found by police abandoned on Adventure Street, the report said.
Officers could see the man was injured, the report said.
Warnke was released from the Beaufort County Detention Center around 3 p.m. Thursday after being granted a $20,000 surety bond for the assault and battery charge and a $10,000 bond for the conspiracy charge, according to the jail log and court records.
This story was originally published December 19, 2021 at 9:14 AM.
