Hilton Head man guilty of lesser charge after shooting death of sister’s boyfriend
Pleading guilty to a lesser charge, a Hilton Head Island man was sent to prison for fatally shooting his sister’s boyfriend in early 2024 as the couple had a domestic dispute.
Moses Young III, 35, was convicted of voluntary manslaughter and a felony gun possession offense, earning him a partially suspended sentence of 8 years followed by 2 years of probation. He received credit for 439 days he already spent in the Beaufort County jail, meaning Young would serve just under 7 years in prison if not granted early release.
Young was initially charged with murder upon his arrest, facing a 30-year minimum prison sentence and the possibility of the death penalty. In South Carolina, voluntary manslaughter is punishable by 2 to 30 years in prison.
Circuit Court Judge Marvin H. Dukes II handed down the sentence May 13 at the Beaufort County Courthouse.
It was about 3 a.m. on March 1, 2024, when Young fired a single fatal shot at an unarmed Anthony Keith Chapman, 37, who was dating Young’s 39-year-old sister and at the time was visiting family in Hilton Head from his home in the Chicago suburbs. Young told police he fired the pistol because Chapman was physically assaulting his sister in their north-island home, although prosecutors argued the case did not meet the criteria for a self-defense claim.
Young was arrested at the scene of the shooting and charged with murder after moving the body outside and trying to convince others inside the house not to call the police, according to an incident report from the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office. He remained in jail until his conviction about 14 months later.
Chapman’s funeral was held near his hometown of Dixmoor, Illinois. His romantic relationship with Young’s sister meant he and Young were well-acquainted — witnesses told police the two men had been drinking and hanging out together prior to the altercation that turned fatal in a matter of seconds.
What happened?
Thirty minutes after the shooting on March 1, 2024, Beaufort County deputies received a 911 hangup and another call reporting a gunshot wound. They followed the reports to a small home on Fish Haul Road, about a mile north of the Hilton Head Island Airport.
The first deputy on scene pulled into the driveway and approached Young, who reportedly had a “small smatter of blood” on the front of his shirt. Young told police he had cut his finger at work, according to the incident report.
Asked if he had heard any gunfire, Young pointed police north toward Mitchelville Road, saying he heard shots from that direction about 10 minutes before.
Deputies realized they had been misdirected when they spoke to Young’s sister, who was the girlfriend of Chapman, the gunshot victim. Chapman had been “grabbing her by the hair and the face” inside her bedroom when Young burst into the room with a pistol and shot her boyfriend, she said.
Chapman’s body was found covered with a tarp near an exterior wall of the home. He had a single gunshot wound to his left cheek.
A small surveillance camera inside the sister’s room captured audio of the assault and the confrontation that followed. The camera lens was blocked by a blanket and did not capture video of the incident.
“Blow me down, I don’t give a f*ck,” Chapman was heard saying as Young drew the firearm on him. Moments later, there came the “loud bang” of the single fatal gunshot.
Conducting a search of a vehicle on scene later that morning, a sheriff’s deputy found the .40-caliber Taurus pistol used in the shooting, which was flagged as stolen out of Savannah.
In an interview with police shortly after, Young said his sister and Chapman had gotten into several verbal spars earlier that night. When he heard a “commotion” from the couple’s room around 3 a.m., Young said, he grabbed his pistol from underneath a chair on the front porch and walked inside to see his sister on the floor. That’s when Young pointed the firearm at Chapman and fired one shot, Young told investigators, believing he had struck the man “somewhere in the upper torso region.”
Young was screened at Beaufort Memorial Hospital before being booked at the county jail on a charge of murder. He “continually apologized” from the back of the police vehicle as he was driven away from the crime scene, the driver noted.
Young’s sister told police she was not hurt during the domestic incident with Chapman. She said she thought her brother’s violent response was “unnecessary” and that she could have handled the situation herself, according to the police report.
From murder to manslaughter
Taylor Diggs, a Beaufort County public defender who represented Young, said he was offered the plea deal under a manslaughter charge “because the State could not ignore the fact that (Young) was acting in defense of his sister.”
Asked if she believed Young’s sentencing was fair, Diggs said she was satisfied with the outcome of the complicated case.
“It’s difficult to say what’s ‘fair’ in cases like this,” she wrote in a text message, “but we are happy with the sentence and happy that Moses still has a life ahead of him after this. Moses is a good person.”
Assistant Solicitor Jared Shedd, who prosecuted the case on behalf of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, said the lesser charge was offered to Young in part because the complicated interpersonal details behind the case would be difficult to present to a jury.
Still, he said, Young was criminally charged in the killing because the situation inside that bedroom did not require a deadly solution.
“It’s kind of a classic case of imperfect self-defense,” Shedd said, adding that Chapman was not armed and that the physical assault had ended by the time Young confronted him. “There were other reasonable means of avoiding the danger.”
Although manslaughter is defined as killing someone without malicious intent, Shedd said, a number of Young’s actions after the fatal gunshot met the standards for malice laid out in the state’s murder statute: failing to immediately call police, moving Chapman’s body and attempting to misdirect deputies when they arrived on scene.
Young’s arrest in March 2024 was his first time being accused of a violent crime in Beaufort County. He had previously been convicted of illegally carrying a pistol, driving under suspension and several simple drug offenses, according to judicial records.
Records from the South Carolina Department of Corrections show he was booked Thursday at the Kirkland Reception and Evaluation Center in Columbia, which is the state’s primary intake facility for new inmates.
