Update: Off-duty Beaufort Co. deputy who pointed gun at teens loses badge, SLED now involved
UPDATE: The Beaufort County Sheriff’s office announced Monday afternoon that the off-duty deputy who lives in the Squiresgate neighborhood was suspended without pay and was relieved of his “credentials, badge, department issued weapons, and equipment by a Command Staff member who responded to the scene.”
The South Carolina Law Enforcement Division is also conducting a criminal investigation into the incident and will forward any potential criminal violations to the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office. The sheriff’s office said the SLED investigation will run parallel to its own internal review, which could take “some time” to complete due to interviews.
A Beaufort County deputy was placed on leave after a widely shared video showed him repeatedly pointing a gun at three boys and threatening to shoot during a tense encounter on Hilton Head Island.
The video shows the deputy, wearing a sheriff’s office vest with shorts and slip-on shoes, approaching the group of boys with his gun drawn Sunday evening on a Hilton Head Island residential street.
He orders the boys to “get on the ground,” according to the video. When the boys shout toward bystanders to call the police, the deputy responds, “I am the police.”
The deputy then struggles with two of the boys as he takes a black backpack from them. As the boy with the camera repeatedly tells the man to stop and not shoot, the deputy approaches him with his gun drawn again.
The deputy was seen pulling one of the boys by his shirt after the boy tried to leave the area. The video ends as the boy with the camera makes multiple pleas for help and screams for his mom.
In an alert posted Monday morning, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office said the deputy had been suspended “pending an internal investigation and any possible criminal investigation.” The agency did not share the deputy’s name or whether he had been off-duty at the time of the incident.
The circumstances leading up to the video’s events were unclear as of Monday morning. The video, which lasts 1 minute, 27 seconds, was taken on Squiresgate Road, part of the Squiresgate private residential community in the Skull Creek area of Hilton Head.
Anyone with information related to the internal investigation, including videos, is encouraged to contact Lieutenant Draisen, the Internal Affairs investigator assigned to the case, at 843-255-3404 or ADraisen@bcgov.net.
This story was originally published September 29, 2025 at 10:20 AM.
