Teen pleads guilty to manslaughter after 6-year-old’s accidental shooting death in Beaufort
A St. Helena Island teenager will serve nearly a decade in prison after pleading guilty to seven felonies, including charges related to last year’s accidental shooting death of a 6-year-old boy and an attempted cover-up of the incident inside a Beaufort apartment.
Benjamin Shamar Seabrook IV, 19, was convicted Feb. 12 of involuntary manslaughter, obstruction of justice, criminal conspiracy and filing a false police report of a felony violation. He also pleaded guilty to armed robbery, felony assault and unlawful firearm possession from a January 2024 carjacking, which earned him 10 years in prison and five years probation.
All seven sentences would run concurrently. Seabrook received credit for 306 days he spent in the Beaufort County jail, bringing his actual prison time to just over nine years.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Bonds handed down the sentence.
Prosecutors said Seabrook had stored a switch-modified pistol under a pillow in a bedroom at the Cross Creek Apartments, located east of the Walmart on Robert Smalls Parkway. That type of modified firearm, which uses a small “switch” to convert a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon, is classified as a machine gun and therefore prohibited under federal law.
While 6-year-old Frankie Washington was unattended inside the room the afternoon of March 2, 2024, the gun inadvertently went off and struck the child in the head. He initially survived the single gunshot wound but died about nine hours later at the Medical University of South Carolina children’s hospital in Charleston.
Washington was born in 2017 and attended Whale Branch Elementary School in Seabrook, according to his obituary.
Seabrook was arrested March 15, 2024, by the Beaufort Police Department. He was also charged with unlawfully placing a child at risk and tampering with physical evidence, both of which were dismissed the day of his sentencing.
At a bond hearing in April 2024, Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office prosecutor said Seabrook hid the handgun after the accidental shooting and “developed a story” that the deadly bullet had come from outside the apartment. He reportedly “poked a hole” in the apartment’s porch screen to give the appearance of a bullet hole and reported his fabrications to the Beaufort Police Department, she added.
Seabrook’s half-sister, 23-year-old Desarai Diamond Da’Janah Bennett, was previously charged as an accessory to the boy’s death, along with charges of criminal conspiracy and filing a false police report. Her cases were dismissed Feb. 12 due to a lack of evidence, according to solicitor’s office spokesperson Jeff Kidd.
Records from the South Carolina Department of Corrections show Seabrook was booked Feb. 20 into the Kirkland Correctional Institution, an all-male facility “where the most dangerous and violent offenders are housed.”
This story was originally published February 28, 2025 at 2:54 PM.
