Jasper County inmate sentenced for brutal attack, rape of prison worker in 2019
A longtime inmate at a Jasper County prison will stay in the system for years longer after pleading guilty to attacking, kidnapping and raping a 68-year-old commissary worker inside the Ridgeland-area facility in 2019.
Ahmad Rashad Bonds, 41, of St. Helena Island, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for his felony convictions of kidnapping and first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
At the time of the brutal, drawn-out assault, Bonds was nearing the end of his 25-year sentence at the Ridgeland Correctional Institution for robbing and sexually assaulting a 60-year-old St. Helena woman in her home in 2002. He was sent to prison in 2004 after pleading guilty to felony burglary, armed robbery and first-degree criminal sexual conduct.
Circuit Court Judge Robert Bonds handed down the inmate’s newest sentence Tuesday at the Jasper County Courthouse. The judge and the defendant are not related despite sharing a last name, the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office noted in a press release.
Both cases’ outcomes shared one common thread: By securing Ahmad Bonds’ guilty pleas, prosecutors spared both victims from having to testify in court about the respective brutal attacks.
In Bonds’ most recent case, the jury had already been selected for a trial when he chose to plead guilty.
“The victim in this case is ready to put this nightmare behind her and move on with her life,” Hunter Swanson, the case’s prosecutor and leader of the 14th Circuit’s Special Victims Unit, wrote in the press release.
Bonds received credit for the 2,289 days he spent incarcerated prior to his conviction, reducing his sentence to just below 23 years. If he serves that full term, he will have spent 44 successive years in prison.
Located along I-95 slightly north of Ridgeland town limits, RCI is an all-male, medium-security prison with a capacity of about 1,100 inmates. It is run by the South Carolina Department of Corrections.
Worker outsmarts inmate to survive attack
The prolonged attack began the afternoon of March 6, 2019, as the 60-year-old prison employee was documenting damaged items in the prison’s stockroom after the end of her shift. As a commissary worker, her job involved purchasing and maintaining inventory for a small storefront inside RCI where inmates could spend their wages on clothes, bedsheets, coffee filters and more.
Wearing a face covering, Ahmad Bonds “snuck into the restricted area” through an unlocked door and attacked her from behind as she washed her hands, prosecutors said. He then sexually assaulted the woman.
After Bonds pushed the woman to the floor, she managed to pull the covering off her attacker’s face. Bonds then dragged her down the hall, according to the Solicitor’s Office, threatening to kill her because “she had seen his face.”
The woman grabbed a nearby landline to call for help, but Bonds reportedly snatched it away and used the phone’s headset to beat her in the head.
As the attack went on, the woman barricaded herself in a storage room using a filing cabinet and table. Bonds eventually got inside, but the prison worker fought back by “spraying chemicals in his face.” He left the storage area and returned to his cell block for a 7 p.m. roll call, the release said.
RCI staff found the injured employee in the storage area about two hours later. She was treated at the facility by prison nurses and later at the hospital.
The next day, the woman identified Bonds as her attacker in a photo lineup and gave investigators a detailed account of the assault. The DNA collected during her sexual assault exam was a match with Bonds’, prosecutors said.
This story was originally published July 23, 2025 at 2:02 PM.
