From a bloody Thanksgiving to $100M coke bust, Beaufort County paradise has known tragedy
It’s been a harsh summer in Beaufort County.
A gifted kindergarten teacher walking her dog near her Hilton Head Island home was killed in an alligator attack.
An 11-year-old girl Hilton Head girl described as “bright, cheerful and involved in everything” was killed in June when she was struck by a car while she was in a crosswalk with her dog on U.S. 278.
A shark bit a 10-year-old boy swimming at a Hilton Head beach.
A 33-year-old woman was killed when her SUV hit a tree on Widewater Road in Spanish Wells Plantation.
And from that same street Tuesday night comes the jarring news that a 39-year-old Bluffton woman died and a Hilton Head doctor was injured in a double shooting.
We’ve learned again that bad things can happen in a good place. Trouble is not off-limits in a so-called “paradise.”
But it’s not new.
Here are several other incidents that have pierced the tranquility of the Lowcountry.
Biggest bust in SC
A dock behind a quiet home in the same Spanish Wells neighborhood was used to smuggle in a half-ton of pure cocaine valued at $100 million about 30 years ago.
“We smashed an international drug-smuggling organization,” said the special agent in charge of the Columbia FBI office when three Hilton Head islanders and five Colombian nationals were arrested in 1989.
From quiet Brams Point came the largest drug bust in the history of South Carolina.
Bloody Thanksgiving
A family gathering on Thanksgiving day turned deadly in the exclusive Brays Island neighborhood in northern Beaufort County in 2010.
Police said drinking was involved, and weapons. An man was accused of attempting to murder his nephew in a confusing and tragic scene. A security officer showed up in time to see the nephew point a gun at his uncle and the officer shot him. That shot, the fourth to hit the 42-year-old Florida man, is the one that killed him, authorities said.
His widow later said in court: “We showed up at their home on Thanksgiving with a turkey, and I left with an evidence bag full of my husband’s bloody watch and his glasses and other personal items. My life is absolutely upside down.”
“Murder Calls”
This summer, TV’s “Murder Calls” show turned its national lens on a brutal 2015 shotgun slaying of a Bluffton restaurateur.
It showed how the Bluffton Police Department and the solicitor’s office solved the mystery after Jonathan Cherol, a co-owner of the former Pepper’s Old Town restaurant in Bluffton, was killed on the back porch of his Pinecrest home on Oct. 28, 2015 by a shotgun blast.
Sly and the Family Stone
Bluffton was rocked by the 1988 killing of a favorite son, Anthony Earl “Tony” Hooks, former lead guitarist of Sly and the Family Stone.
Hooks, whose deep roots in Bluffton included being a grandson of educator Michael C. Riley, was shot in the chest with a shotgun when he answered a knock on the door in the early-morning hours at the home of his mother, Sarah Riley Hooks, on Bridge Street.
So stunned was the community that more than 600 mourners packed the auditorium at Michael C. Riley Elementary School for the 32-year-old’s funeral.
A Hilton Head real estate agent and trumpet player was charged in the case, but found innocent by reason of insanity in a bench trial.
This story was originally published September 5, 2018 at 1:29 PM.