Shot tow driver here by ‘grace’ Richland sheriff says with arrest of 2 on SC ‘crime spree’
Two men who were on a “crime spree” in South Carolina were charged in the shooting of a Columbia tow truck driver, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced Tuesday.
Deputies charged 32-year-old Sirdonovan Paull and 27-year-old Jahleel Simmons with attempted murder and armed robbery in the shooting of the tow truck driver.
The driver was by Lott’s side when the charges were announced. ”The good man upstairs was on my side,” the driver said.
The driver did not want to be identified. Lott did not identify the driver either.
Lott said the driver is alive today by the “grace of God.”
On Jan. 2 about 1:30 a.m., the driver was in his tow truck near Shop Road, according to police. Paull and Simmons ambushed the victim and held him up. They shot in the truck at least six times, Lott said.
Paull and Simmons were on a “crime spree” in South Carolina in which they committed “numerous” similar robberies, mostly in the Charleston area, Lott said.
During one of those robberies, Simmons held up a person in Goose Creek, SC, Lott said. A person tried to intervene in the robbery and Simmons shot and killed the person, the sheriff said.
Simmons was in jail in Berkeley County on a murder charge stemming from the robbery-turned-shooting when Richland County investigators concluded that he was one of the men involved in the tow truck driver’s shooting, Lott said.
The tow driver’s perspective
One person put a gun to one side of the tow truck driver’s head and the other pointed a gun at him from the other side before they robbed him, the driver said.
Then they opened fired. The driver remembered bleeding in the truck, but he has no memory about what happened over the next couple hours.
But he remembered thinking he was going to die.
According to police, after being shot, the victim drove more than two miles to South Beltline Boulevard, where deputies found him and gave him aid before paramedics arrived.
The victim said that doctors have told him he’s recovered quicker than most people who have been shot at least six times. He may have been shot eight times, but doctors were unable to tell for sure. The shooting and recovery has still been “one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to deal with,” he said.
He still had stitches in him as he spoke at Tuesday news conference.
It’s unusual for the sheriff’s department to have victims speak at news conferences. But the victim said he wanted to speak to give a message about safety. He said he wanted to tell people not to be alone in dark areas and to be aware of their surroundings. He wanted to give that message even if it got to just one person, the victim said.
The victim also praised Richland County Sheriff’s Department investigators. He said the amount of evidence and information investigators were able to gather based on what few facts he could recall was “amazing.”
On the investigative team
The shooting had “no leads” at first, Sheriff Lott said.
Investigators got a break when they found an image of the shooters’ getaway car
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department crime scene unit gathered evidence linking Simmons to the shooting, Lott said. He did not specify what piece of evidence linked Simmons to the shooting. But Lott said that Simmons’ DNA and fingerprints were in a criminal database from previous arrests.
Police arrested Paull in Myrtle Beach. When they arrested him, he was in the car that Richland investigators determined was the getaway car in the tow truck driver’s shooting, Lott said.
Because the sheriff’s department has its own forensics lab, it quickly processed evidence and filed the charges, Lott said.
Investigators are still working to determine if the guns used in the tow truck driver’s shootings were used in any other crimes, Lott said. Other evidence is being gathered as well to produce a “great case.”
Richland County is funding a new forensic lab for the department that will be housed in what’s currently Columbia Place Mall.
This story was originally published February 15, 2022 at 4:17 PM.