EASTOVER, SC — A 23-year-old jail guard faces one additional charge – woods arson – in addition to murder and death or injury of a child in utero in connection to the death of his girlfriend.

Tristan Gist is accused of shooting his pregnant girlfriend, then burning her body in woods near Eastover.

The SC Forestry Commission charged Gist with the arson charge Thursday, spokesman Scott Hawkins said.

Gist, a former detention officer at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, was fired from the detention center over the weekend when he did not show up to work, according to a spokesman in the Richland County public information office.

He is being held at the Lexington County Detention Center and must appear before a Richland County circuit court judge for a bond hearing.

The victim has been tentatively identified as Dierra Fisher, 22, of Columbia, said Richland County Coroner Gary Watts. He said he was 99.9 percent sure Fisher was the victim but was waiting on medical records to be certain.

Gist is accused of shooting Fisher once in the head and then driving her body – with her two small children in tow – to woods off Screaming Eagle Road Extension, east of Fort Jackson. Law enforcement officers believe he then burned the body.

The scene was discovered by firefighters called to the resulting brush fire.

Kelly Davis