One of the FBI’s most wanted in SC pleads guilty nearly 20 years after crime
A man who was on the FBI’s most wanted list for a crime committed in South Carolina 19 years ago pleaded guilty to charges on Thursday.
Reynaldo R. Pimienta pleaded guilty to assault and battery with intent to kill and weapon possession during a violent crime for shooting his ex-girlfriend in Greenville County in 2000, court records show. Judge Perry Gravel sentenced the 55-year-old to 22 years imprisonment.
In September 2018, Pimienta was featured in a story about South Carolina’s most wanted suspects.
The Greenville News and WYFF first reported on Pimienta’s plea hearing. Assistant Solicitor Ryan Holloway of the Thirteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office, which includes Greenville and Pickens counties, presented the evidence against Pimienta in court.
In May 2000, Pimienta pulled up next to his ex-girlfriend while she was in her car and stopped on a street in Mauldin, South Carolina, according to the FBI. He shot up her car. One of the bullets hit the woman in midsection.
The attacked left the victim paralyzed from the neck down.
Pimienta fled to Tampa and was suspected to have left the country, investigators said. Federal authorities issued a warrant for his arrest a week after the incident. The FBI put Pimienta on their most wanted list.
Pimienta is from Colombia, South America. Authorities received information over the near decade-long search that he was in New York and Spain.
Authorities located Pimienta in Bogota, Colombia, by tracking a cellphone they discovered he was using, the Greenville News reported. A bureau agent from the FBI’s Greenville field office arrested Pimienta in Bogota on Dec. 20, 2018, and brought him back to the United States to face trial.
Greenville County Sheriff’s Office booked Pimienta at the county detention center where he remains jailed and awaiting transportation to a state correctional facility.
Pimienta still faces a federal charge for fleeing the country to avoid prosecution.
This story was originally published December 21, 2019 at 2:13 PM.