An argument, then a gunshot. How a Five Points shooting changed two men’s lives
Two lives were forever changed by a gun carried into Jake’s, a popular Five Points bar, the night of July 24, 2021.
The first belonged to Jonathan Wise, who fired the gun he carried in his waistband during a scuffle with a bouncer.
The second was Geoff Sears’, a manager at the bar who says he will spend the rest of his life dealing with the consequences of a bullet that tore through his body.
“I have not had a normal day since the injury and may never, according to my doctors,” Sears, 35, told the court in a victim impact statement.
On Thursday, Judge Debra McClaslin sentenced Wise to five years in prison for shooting Sears. “You could easily be standing here on a murder charge,” McClaslin told Wise, as she made the decision, in her words, to take away his 20s.
Wise, 23, had pleaded guilty to assault and battery, a less severe crime than attempted murder, his original charge.
“He is a good kid who made a terrible decision,” said his attorney, Greg Collins, as he asked McClaslin to consider a suspended sentence.
“This was just one night,” Collins said.
“It only takes one night,” McClaslin shot back.
In deciding on five years, with credit for a year he already served, McClaslin said she considered that he had no prior record but weighed it against the life-changing harm he had done to Sears, who has endured multiple reconstructive surgeries and now lives with daily pain.
“He has no prior record,” McClaslin said, “but I can’t just let people go around shooting people.”
McClaslin also expressed confusion about why Wise felt the need to carry a gun in Five Points, which like many South Carolinians she expressed fond memories for.
Given the opportunity to address the court, Wise faced the judge and apologized to Sears, Sears’ family and his coworkers. He described being the oldest of nine siblings, and needing to provide for his family.
“I am not a menace to society,” Wise said. “I’m not careless but I made a careless mistake.”
Differing accounts of the scene and questions about Wise’s intentions — Wise maintains that he never meant to shoot anyone — led the prosecutors office to downgrade the charge, Assistant 5th Circuit Solicitor Carter Potts told the court.
Prosecutors also dismissed the weapons charge against Wise. His attorney said that Wise brought the handgun that night because he was scared he might be robbed on the way home.
Since being released on bond in 2022 from the Alvin S Glenn Detention Center, where his lawyer says he was jumped twice and witnessed two stabbings, Wise had worked his way up from a valet to a full-time technician at the Jim Hudson Toyota dealership.
He had not been in trouble with the law since his release.
“This was really a one-off situation,” Collins told the court.
July 24, 2021, was a busy night just like any other at Jake’s Bar and Grill, a popular watering hole in Five Points. Reading a statement in court, Sears recalled how both the bar’s indoor and outdoor areas were at legal capacity, with 315 customers crammed into the bar, meaning that customers could not move freely between the two areas.
Sears, who said he was 10 to 15 feet away, noticed an individual he now knows to be Wise get into an argument with a bouncer and was being escorted out. Attorneys stated that Wise got into an argument with the door staff when he was denied re-entry to a part of the bar that was at capacity.
The argument escalated, and Sears recalled seeing Wise shoot the gun “point-blank” at the bouncer.
Instead the bullet struck Sears, entering his upper groin.
Telling his side of the story, Wise said he was panicked and fearful for his life during the chaotic confrontation in the bar, when he said was trying to walk away while multiple people screamed and grabbed at him.
“It’s a messed up situation to be in. Nobody knows what they’ll do until they’re in that position,” Wise said.
Both the prosecutor and defense attorney indicated in court that the evidence did not suggest that Wise was trying to harm Sears, but what happened after is not in dispute. Wise fled, pursued by a Columbia Police Department trainee who was at the bar. He ultimately escaped, tossing the gun over a fence in the Shandon neighborhood. He was arrested the same night.
Since the shooting, Sears says he has had multiple surgeries to reconstruct parts of his urinary tract and lower intestines. He had endured multiple catheters, a ostomy bag and several rounds of serious infections. He recounted how his parents would have to pack his bullet wound with three feet of surgical gauze.
He said that he had had been unable to work and had drained most of his savings over the course of a year. While undergoing the surgeries, he had been forced to rely almost entirely on his parents, Sears said.
“This is not a good person, and the court should not trust this person within our community,” Sears said. “There is something truly evil about a person that would fire a gun with such reckless abandon.”
Sears said that he continues to suffer anxiety, PTSD and depression from the incident.
“I am always looking over my shoulder and have thoughts of people harming me,” Sears said.
Another shooting haunts Five Points
More than 20 members of the food service industry filled the courtroom pews in solidarity with Sears.
They were the “foot soldiers” of Columbia’s food and beverage industry, a defining feature of the city, said long time Columbia lawyer Joe McCulloch, who was in court speaking for Sears and the industry more broadly.
Although he is primarily a defense attorney, McCulloch found himself urging McClaslin to consider a serious sentence for Wise in order to help protect service workers from the “lightning strike” of people like Wise.
“He was a lousy shot,” McCulloch said of Wise. “Which may have made him the most dangerous person in town that night.”
But Sears was not the first bystander to be shot in Five Points.
In 2018, Howard Boone Jr. was paralyzed from the neck down after a gunman fired into a crowd following a St. Patrick’s Day festival. In 2013, USC freshman Martha Childress was also paralyzed after being struck by a stray bullet while waiting for a cab in Five Points.