Pair gets probation for roles in murder of standout Hilton Head soccer player
About seven months after their criminal charges were refiled, two suspects pleaded guilty to assisting in the 2019 murder of 18-year-old Trey Blackshear, a standout soccer player at Hilton Head Island High School. Both will avoid prison time if they comply with court conditions.
Beaufort residents Jaesean Jeffrey Redd, 26, and Kionna Michele Ferguson, 25, both received suspended sentences of five years probation for their convictions as accessories “after the fact” to the murder. Redd was ordered to undergo monitored house arrest during his probation period, according to Beaufort County court records.
Ferguson reportedly drove Redd and the pair of suspected shooters to a marijuana deal on Dec. 23, 2019, outside Bluffton’s Lord of Life Lutheran Church, where Blackshear was waiting in his car with a friend.
The two gunmen climbed into the backseat of Blackshear’s vehicle and opened fire in an attempt to rob him, prosecutors previously said, fatally striking him in the head and shoulder. Ferguson then drove the group away from the murder scene in her 2001 Toyota Camry, according to the warrant for her arrest in early 2020.
Blackshear’s loved ones remember the teen for his humor, youthul wisdom and “strong ability to put a smile on faces,” his obituary says. Days before his murder, he had graduated early from HHIHS with high academic honors. He planned to play collegiate soccer on a scholarship and study business administration so he could inherit his grandfather’s company.
Redd and Ferguson would not serve their full prison terms — 15 years and 10 years, respectively — unless they violated their probation conditions, according to Jeff Kidd, a spokesperson for the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office. Court records said the pair’s probation terms “may be transferred” to Pickens County, where both have alternate addresses.
Ferguson and Redd’s accessory charges were refiled in late 2024 after being “remanded for investigation” in March 2021, meaning prosecutors asked Bluffton police to keep investigating because there was not yet enough evidence to take the cases to trial, Kidd previously said.
“In the course of the investigation, some new things came to light that allowed us to reinstate those charges,” Kidd told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette in December of last year.
St. Helena Island man Terrance Wing, 22, was the first to be convicted for Blackshear’s killing when a Beaufort County jury found him guilty of murder in April 2024. He was sentenced to about 37 years in state prison. Despite being 16 at the time of the deadly shooting, he was tried and punished as an adult.
Trial proceedings for the second suspected shooter, 22-year-old Lady’s Island resident Xavier Da’Quan Barnes, had not yet been scheduled.
