A teenager screamed for his mother as an off-duty sheriff’s deputy in khaki shorts and slip-on shoes pointed a gun at him. He was one of four boys restrained on the roadway in a Hilton Head Island neighborhood Sunday evening — a confrontation captured in a viral video that would soon divide the quiet community.

The incident unfolded as three 14-year-old boys walking through the Squiresgate neighborhood were first confronted by a neighbor on an ATV and later by the off-duty officer. Videos shared by a relative of one of the teens showed the off-duty deputy pointing his gun at the three boys, threatening to shoot and later physically struggling with two of the boys as he attempted to take a black backpack from one of them.

The video quickly spread on social media, sparking outrage among some Beaufort County residents. It raised questions over who can walk where, how communities handle safety and the use of police force — especially when directed at children.

But the 1-minute, 27-second clip showed only a fragment of what happened that evening. The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette spoke with neighbors and family members and reviewed additional videos to reconstruct a fuller timeline of events — revealing a chaotic night, potential legal action, past neighborhood trouble from teens and a rumored gun in the boys’ possession.

Several neighbors and the off-duty deputy were heard in the videos claiming one of the teens was armed. Alexis Housey, the aunt of one of the boys, said police found no firearms on the teens. Relatives deny a gun ever existed. Law enforcement officials did not comment on their findings after responding to the neighborhood around 6:45 p.m. Sunday.

By Monday afternoon, the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office announced that the deputy — a Squiresgate resident who has not been officially named — had been suspended without pay and stripped of his badge and service weapon by a senior officer who responded to the scene. The agency’s Internal Affairs division began a review to determine if the deputy’s actions violated departmental policies.

State agents at the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division also launched a criminal investigation into the incident at the request of the sheriff, authorities announced Monday. When the probe is complete, investigators and attorneys from the Regional Public Integrity Unit — a partnership between two judicial circuits that focuses on prosecuting public corruption — will decide “if criminal charges are appropriate,” according to a press release from the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office.

The teens went to school Monday morning, Housey said, and the three families regrouped afterward to decide if legal action would be pursued. Housey wonders if the dispute was racially motivated: One boy was Black, one was Hispanic and the third was white.

Some neighbors defended the deputy’s character and his actions that evening, calling him a “family man” who was enjoying Sunday night football before he bravely sprang into action. Others said they were mortified to see that level of force used against young boys, no matter what they might have done.

Neighbors on Monday afternoon pointed out the off-duty deputy’s house to Island Packet reporters. When approached, he declined to comment. The deputy’s personnel file showed no prior disciplinary infractions since he joined the sheriff’s office in 2006.

‘Abuse of authority’

The incident began around 6:30 p.m. Sept. 28, when three 14-year-old boys set out for a walk in the small neighborhoods near the Skull Creek District on Hilton Head. One of the boys lives in Chinaberry Ridge, where the friends met that day.

A short walk from the subdivision lies Squiresgate, where none of the boys live. The two neighborhoods back up to one another, separated by a dirt path worn down by dog walkers and others looking for a shortcut. On Sunday, the boys used that path to cross into Squiresgate, Housey said.

Squiresgate bills itself as a “private residential community,” but without a gate, the roads are considered public. However, some neighbors cited a persistent issue of teens entering the neighborhood and causing trouble in the tight-knit community.

While there, the teens were approached by a man on a green ATV. In a video taken by one of the teens and shared with The Island Packet, the man can be seen smiling at them, but Housey said the exchange quickly shifted.

After greeting them, the man began pressing the boys about where they lived. When they refused to answer, cursing at him as he followed, one teen said: “You come out of nowhere and you start talking sh*t … You’re 40 years old, bruh … You’re drunk as f*ck, bro … grown-a** man following kids.”

The man eventually rode off. Soon after, the off-duty deputy drove past the boys in a white pickup truck. However, according to Housey, the deputy never identified himself as such.

“I’m on your side,” the deputy told them from the truck, according to another video shared with The Island Packet. “Relax … The best thing is for you guys to leave.”

The teens questioned why. “But what did we do?” one asked. The off-duty deputy responded: “You guys don’t live here.”

When the boys pushed back, the deputy warned: “Do you guys want to get arrested or not?” One teen replied: “Get arrested for what?” Another said, “Call the police.”

The off-duty deputy then returned to his home nearby, where he strapped on a sheriff’s vest and holstered a service weapon before coming outside. The bottom half of his outfit consisted of khaki shorts and slip-on shoes.

In the viral video, the deputy can be heard ordering the boys to the ground as he approached with his gun pointed toward them. When they shouted for bystanders to call the police, he replied: “I am the police.”

The deputy is seen struggling with two of the boys, pulling one by the shirt and seizing a black backpack. One of the boys pushed the deputy, causing him to draw his gun again.

“I will shoot you,” the deputy said twice, prompting the boy who was recording to plead, “Stop, do not shoot.” The deputy then pointed his gun at the same teen and later tried to grab the phone from him. A group of neighbors soon arrived and helped to restrain the boys.

The teens’ cries for help got louder and louder. Accusations that the boys had a gun went flying around.

At some point, the teen who lives in Chinaberry Ridge called his older brother, who became the fourth boy at the scene.

The brother, who ran to the scene barefoot, was quickly ordered to the ground and restrained by a neighbor. His own video showed the neighbor from the ATV using both hands to hold his younger brother facedown on the pavement.

“Mom … they are saying I have a gun,” the older brother screamed at his mother as she approached the group.

She halted as the deputy bellowed at her, “Walk away!”

“No one has a gun,” one teen insisted. “This is a lawsuit,” the older brother added.

In the cellphone video filmed by the older brother, he asks the neighbor standing behind him to “stop squeezing my neck.”

Not shown on the video, Housey said, was another neighbor tripping her nephew as he ran, forcing him to the ground and holding a gun to his head.

“They let that man go. Nothing was done,” Housey said.

Police backup eventually arrived. At first, one of the boys was accused of assaulting an officer and was nearly sent to juvenile detention. But the accusation was dropped after police watched the teens’ videos, according to Housey.

The deputy’s vest and service weapon were later confiscated by a sheriff’s office lieutenant who responded to the area.

Housey said deputies at the scene appeared friendlier with neighbors than with her sister, the mother of one of the boys.

“(Police) treated the civilians like drinking buddies, and treated my sister (and the teens) as if they were criminals,” she said.

For now, Housey said her family is consulting lawyers and considering legal action.

The deputy’s actions, in her opinion, were an “abuse of authority.”

Neighbors’ opinions mixed

Neighbors in the Squiresgate and Chinaberry neighborhoods expressed a range of opinions about whether the off-duty deputy was justified in his actions. Those in support of him cited what they saw as a troubling trend of teens causing chaos in the area — with law enforcement doing little to stop it.

Natacha Cash, a Squiresgate resident and mother of three small children, says her family had to build a fence to protect her daughters because their yard was being used by teens as an “escape route” between their subdivision and Chinaberry. They once found BB gun pellets in the backyard. Teens regularly stole bicycles from the neighborhood, she added.

The teens walking down Squiresgate Road on Sunday evening were a part of this problem, according to Cash. She said they were recognized by several neighbors and were asked to leave “because of their background.”

That’s when one of the teens was seen flashing a gun at a neighbor, according to Cash, and the off-duty deputy was called.

“And that changes the whole scenario, right?” Cash said, referring to a teen possibly being armed. “If we didn’t have cops like that, off-duty or on-duty, to help us in our neighborhood, you can imagine what it would escalate to.”

Cash said police did not find a firearm on the teens, but that many neighbors were speculating they hid the gun as the deputy returned to his house to retrieve his gear. The rumored hiding spot: the small park near the end of Squiresgate Road.

“I looked everywhere. I didn’t find it,” Cash said. “So maybe [the teens] came back last night. And we’ve had cops going back and forth … maybe they found it as well.”

Other neighbors in support of the deputy were seen on video helping him keep the teens in place before police arrived Sunday evening, with some physically holding the boys down on the roadway.

One of those men, a Squiresgate resident who declined to share his name, said he was involved in the incident and would likely be a part of the police’s investigation. He called the teens “hoodlum kids” whose delinquent streak in Squiresgate had lasted a “long time.”

“There’s been people already threatened with their lives [in this neighborhood], and we’re not going to put up with it,” he told The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette. “It’s all about somebody from out of here, not in here, that caused this issue.”

Tara Caron, a retired former teacher at the Hilton Head Island School for the Creative Arts who lives in Chinaberry Ridge, agreed the area had an issue with theft, particularly with younger perpetrators. Her own car was stolen two years ago and retrieved after a high-speed police chase that ended in a crash on Squire Pope Road.

Still, she said, “nothing the boys could have done” warranted the response of the off-duty deputy she saw in the viral video.

Caron teared up as she recounted watching the video for the first time Monday morning. One of the boys in the video looked like a younger version of her son, she said.

“It was just very upsetting to see that happen to children,” she said. “No matter what they did, an officer … should not be out waving guns in their faces.”

The Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette chose not to disclose the name of the deputy since he has not been officially identified. The identities of the teens are also being withheld because they are minors.

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