Shooting suspect is first person charged under Richland County’s hate crime law
A Columbia area white man has been charged with a hate crime after a shot was fired in the direction of a Black man who was jogging close to an upper income subdivision, Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott announced Friday.
It is the first hate crimes arrest under Richland County’s new hate crimes ordinance, enacted in early June.
“An individual had a gun and shot at someone solely based on the race of the victim,” said Lott, who played a video at a Friday press conference showing a shot being fired from a four-door dark-colored BMW in the direction of a Black jogger near an entrance to the Spring Valley subdivision in northeast Richland County. A blue puff of smoke appears from the driver’s side of the car after the shot.
The jogger, who was not identified other than being an adult male, was not hit. But he was “scared to death,” Lott said after the press conference.
The video led to a suspect, Jonathan Felkel, 33, being identified and charged, Lott said. Spring Valley security assisted, Lott said.
Felkel was arrested Thursday and charged with possession of a weapon during a violent crime and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, Lott said.
Felkel’s bond was set at $1 million Friday afternoon by Judge Margaret Strom Williams, a Richland County magistrate, at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center where Felkel remains incarcerated.
If Felkel does make bond, he will be under House arrest with GPS monitoring and be required to turn over all his weapons and have no contact with the victim, the judge said.
Both the accused shooter and the jogger live in the Spring Valley subdivision, Lott said. They did not know each other, Lott said.
Spring Valley is known for its large and expensive homes.
“Spring Valley is the premier secure community in Northeast Columbia, SC. Our custom homes are spread out over 1,200 acres of rolling hills and mature landscaping, with many homes bordering the prestigious Spring Valley Country Club or one of eight lakes,” says a notice on a Spring Valley website.
The incident took place around dawn, at 6:30 a.m. on July 17, the sheriff said.
In security camera video of the incident, Felkel can be seen waiting for a neighborhood gate to open when he reaches over and grabs the rifle, which was propped in the passenger seat. After the defendant fired a shot and missed the jogger, the defendant allegedly yelled, “Keep running, boy!,” according to deputies, before driving through the now open gate. “Boy” is a derogatory term used during the days of racial segregation and white supremacy in South Carolina.
When interviewed by sheriff’s deputies, the suspect admitted shooting because the jogger is Black, the sheriff said.
There are conflicting details in descriptions of the incident. A sheriff’s department news release says the jogger told deputies he was shot at. But an incident report says the video shows a man firing a rifle into the air.
“The suspect actually said in the interview that initially he was going to shoot him, but he didn’t,” Lott said.
Although the main charges against the suspect are possession of a weapon during a violent crime and assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature, the county hate crimes ordinance adds an extra dimension to the incident, Lott said.
“The serious charge is based on the gun... but this charge sends a message that if you commit a crime solely based on hate, you can be prosecuted,” Lott said.
The county’s ordinance makes it a misdemeanor to commit a bias-motivated crime, and adds another layer of legal sanctions for intimidation. If a crime were motivated by a person’s race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, disability or other bias, the defendant would face penalties for that crime, and for violating the hate intimidation ordinance.
The penalty for being convicted of a hate crime under the county’s misdemeanor ordinance is a $500 fine and 30 days in jail.
The violent crimes Felker is charged with are felonies and carry multi-year prison terms.
South Carolina is one of two states without a state hate crimes law. Wyoming is the other state without such a law — a federal hate crimes law is named after Matthew Shepard, a Wyoming gay man who was murdered for his sexuality in the 1990s.
After South Carolina’s majority white General Assembly rejected continued efforts to pass a state hate crimes law, cities and towns in South Carolina started passing their own policies to fill the gap in state law. Columbia passed a similar law in 2019, and last year the town of Cayce became the first municipality in Lexington County to enact a local hate and intimidation ordinance.
There are federal hate crimes statutes.
Dylann Roof, a Columbia resident, was convicted of federal hate crimes-related murder in the 2015 shootings of nine African-Americans at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston. Roof had made it clear in public writings and in a videotaped confession that the only reason for the killings was the victims’ race.
A Charleston federal jury convicted Roof of the killings. He is now on federal death row.
Friday’s county hate crimes charge was both a milestone and a bittersweet reminder that the state has yet to pass a hate crimes law, said Richland County Councilwoman Tyra Little, who helped introduce and pass the county ordinance in June.
Little told The State that she hoped the law showed “that we care about our citizens of Richland County.” But little added that the fact that a random act of hate could occur in Columbia in 2025 was proof that more work needed to done to combat racism in South Carolina.
“I think we need to have more conversations about hate itself,” Little said. “It’s an open dialogue.”
Richland County is about 41 percent white and 47 percent Black.
The shooting at a Black jogger by a white is reminiscent of a 2020 Georgia incident, where an African-American, Ahmaud Arbery, 25, who was out jogging, was trailed by three white men in pickup trucks. Arbery was eventually shot and killed by one of the men. All three of the white men are now in prison.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
This story was originally published July 25, 2025 at 12:39 PM.