He had 3 arrests for attempted murder. How did he end up in the Vista with a gun?

John Earl Bates Jr. is sitting in jail, awaiting trial on seven counts of attempted murder and gun charges for a shootout that injured eight people in Columbia’s Vista district. But the 28-year-old’s tangled criminal history shows he’s been here before – and on attempted murder charges.

Bates is one of four Newberry men charged in the gunbattle that shook the popular nightlife district in the early hours of Sept. 16, a gunbattle investigators say was fueled by a music industry-related beef between two groups.

Before the mayhem outside Empire Supper Club in the Vista, Bates had been arrested three separate times on charges of attempted murder, a charge that carries up to 30 years in prison.

So what happened in each of those cases? Did the Vista shooting have to happen?

Law enforcement officials say a flurry of obstacles that often hinder police investigations also prevented prosecution on the attempted murder charges in each of these cases.

Most importantly, and mostly because of fear, victims and witnesses didn’t want to talk.

A breakup, threats and gunshots

Eric Jones had just made a purchase at a Newberry convenience store on April 1, 2011, when he got into the Honda Civic he had borrowed from someone.

Then, a man he identified as Bates who had a gun in his waistband tried to force his way into the car, according to Jones’ statement to police.

“He was trying to get at me, so I pulled off,” wrote Jones, who was 19 at the time. Jones said Bates stood in front of the car, so he drove in the opposite direction, according to his statement. Bates fired multiple shots at the car, with two rounds hitting the rear bumper and windshield.

The incident was not reported until hours later, when the owner of the Civic made a report about the damage to her car. She told officers that she and Bates had dated “briefly” a year earlier and that Bates threatened her when she ended the relationship, according to the report.

Police noted in the report that despite the area around the store being crowded at the time of the shooting, “no one admitted to seeing or hearing anything.”

Bates called Jones afterward and apologized for shooting at him, saying he did not know Jones was driving the car, the report states. Jones did not come to headquarters to make a statement until May 12, 2011, Interim Chief Roy McClurkin said. Warrants were issued for Bates for attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime.

In November 2011, with no cooperating witnesses, Bates pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, and the gun charge was dismissed, according to court records. He was sentenced to five years in prison suspended to 90 days with credit for time served, and five years probation.

“The charges against John Earl Bates Jr. were handled by the former administration,” Eighth Circuit Solicitor David Stumbo said in a statement when asked about the decision to plead the case down. “It appears, based on a review of the record, that the prosecutor who handled the case at the time made the decision to enter into a plea agreement based on the facts presented during the case.”

People didn’t want to talk.

Charges dismissed

A year later, on April 26, 2012, Bates was arrested on four counts of attempted murder for a shooting in Newberry County.

This shooting stemmed from a dispute at a nightclub in Saluda, according to Newberry County Sheriff Lee Foster.

“At some point, the van the assailants were driving caught up with the victims’ vehicle, and there were gunshots into the vehicle,” Foster said. “As we were investigating it, the victims in the car gave us the names of several people that were involved in it; one of the people in the car doing the shooting was the Bates subject.”

Investigators later learned that at some point between the confrontation at the Saluda club and the shooting in Newberry County, the van had stopped and let out Bates and another suspect who also initially was charged, Foster said.

Those charges were dismissed, and the suspect who was determined to be the shooter was later found guilty and sentenced to 12 years.

The victims talked and gave names to law enforcement, but Bates wasn’t there when the shooting happened.

“He was involved in the initial confrontation,” Foster said. “The initial confrontation led up to the final confrontation. He just wasn’t there when the shooting took place.”

‘Try to get something’

Bates was connected to another shooting in 2013.

He and another man were involved in an incident at a Saluda restaurant on June 2, 2013, during which the other man pulled a gun and threatened to “shoot everyone there,” according to a Saluda police report.

They left in a blue Crown Victoria that drove back past the restaurant minutes later as gunshots rang out, the report states.

One woman was shot in the foot, police said. Another woman was shot at but not injured, and a car belonging to a third woman was hit by gunfire, prompting three attempted murder charges, according to 11th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard of Lexington.

Bates was picked up on the charges in 2015 – two years later, records show. He pleaded no contest in 2016 to a count of assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, which carries up to 20 years in prison. The judge went with the prosecutor’s recommendation of sentencing Bates to time served.

Hubbard, who was not the solicitor at the time, said the prosecutor who handled the case is no longer in the 11th Circuit. He did not want to speculate on why the case was pleaded down. But he noted that the primary victim had pending criminal charges for an unrelated case.

And she didn’t want to cooperate with law enforcement.

“It’s not unusual in a case where you’re looking at a dismissal to try to get something out of the case,” he said of the plea. “If that means one plea, then that’s what you do.”

In court before the shooting

While Bates was in jail awaiting trial on charges from the 2013 Saluda shooting, he was charged with second-degree assault and battery for an attack inside the Saluda County jail, Hubbard said.

He pleaded guilty to that charge and was sentenced to three years in prison suspended to five years probation, Hubbard said.

Bates was serving that probation when he was arrested and convicted on a third-degree assault charge with Newberry police in April, Hubbard said. He failed to report that conviction to the S.C. Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services, prompting a hearing to revoke his probation.

It was during that hearing – less than 24 hours before the Sept. 16 shooting in the Vista – that Circuit Court Judge Donald Hocker decided against revoking Bates’ probation, after hearing from the CEO and president of the record company Bates had signed with.

“I wanted to step in front of the judge and tell him (Bates) had a promising future,” Jervonta Walker, CEO of Five Star Empire record label, told The State newspaper after the shooting. “We were giving him an opportunity to chase his dream. He was doing well. We didn’t have any problems with him.”

Bates’ stage name is “Hun Dunn.”

His stage persona makes use of his time spent in trouble with law enforcement.

“With a highly checkered past that included being ‘incarcerated’ nearly 20 times firmly behind him,” Bates’ page on the company’s website says, “... the former big time trapper is set to become the game’s #1 rapper.”

Stalking, other charges

The attempted murder charges punctuate a list of other offenses for Bates.

They include criminal domestic violence, hindering an officer, malicious injury to personal property and use of a firearm under the influence.

One case in particular included threats.

Bates was arrested by Columbia police in 2015 on a 2013 charge of stalking that stemmed from multiple phone calls to a Columbia woman in which he threatened her and her family members, according to an arrest warrant.

He also threatened to “get his friend to have sex with the victim’s 12-year-old daughter.” And he said he, too, would have sex with the 12-year-old girl “and make her pregnant.”

Bates pleaded guilty in April 2016 to a lesser harassment charge and was sentenced to 30 days in jail, according to court documents.

He was given credit for time served while he was awaiting trial in jail.

‘Fear of retribution’

Bates and the other three defendants charged in the Vista shooting are no strangers to Newberry County law enforcement.

“We’re very familiar with them all,” Foster said.

His agency is working with Columbia police, since the suspects in the Vista shooting are part of two groups that have been feuding in Newberry County the past year over turf issues.

“It had really heated up in the last several months,” Foster said. “There’s no reason for it, but the excuse is a neighborhood rivalry. When you have neighborhood rivalries, you have arguments over territories, you have arguments over women and you have arguments over cars.”

Foster said his officers were not aware of any beefs about music, something Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has mentioned. But they know Bates is an aspiring rap artist.

When these disputes turn violent, Foster said, victims and witnesses often do not cooperate.

The two primary groups in this turf battle also are believed to be behind a Newberry County shooting that happened a week before the Vista gunfight. The victim was shot as he left a store.

He didn’t want to cooperate with police.

“A lot of the neighborhood people want something done about it,” Foster said. “But they’re afraid to do anything because of fear of retribution.”

This story was originally published September 30, 2017 at 3:58 PM with the headline "He had 3 arrests for attempted murder. How did he end up in the Vista with a gun?."