Man arrested for gun crime now also charged with murder, SC sheriff says
One South Carolina man was killed and now another has been charged with murder, the Lexington County Sheriff’s Department said Wednesday.
Patrick David Esparza, 26, is charged with murder in the March 20 shooting of Charles Boyd Moore Jr., the sheriff’s department said in a news release.
The shooting happened in the Hammond Avenue area of West Columbia, Lexington County Coroner Margaret Fisher said. That’s not far from Exit 111 on I-26, which is the junction with U.S. 1.
Deputies were initially notified that a shooting victim, who was bleeding, began knocking on doors in the neighborhood, asking for help, Capt. Adam Myrick previously said.
Moore, a 54-year-old West Columbia resident who had been shot in the upper body, was taken to an area hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to Fisher.
“Early in their investigation, detectives identified Esparza as a person of interest in Mr. Moore’s death because the two had been seen together just hours before Mr. Moore was shot to death at a home on Hammond Avenue,” Lexington County Sheriff Jay Koon said in the release.
No other injuries were reported.
Esparza left the scene and went to a home on nearby Grove Street where he hid the gun investigators believe he used in the shooting, according to the sheriff’s department.
“This was a crime that involved multiple locations, some of them within the city of West Columbia,” Koon said. “We’re grateful to the West Columbia Police Department for working with us in the early phases of this investigation.”
Both of those agencies, along with the coroner’s office, investigated the fatal shooting.
There was no word about a motive for the shooting, or how the men knew each other.
Esparza was actually behind bars at the Lexington County Detention Center when he was charged with murder, jail records show. Deputies arrested Esparza on March 20 on a weapons charge unrelated to Moore’s shooting death, according to the sheriff’s department.
He remains in the county jail after a Tuesday bond hearing where a judge denied him bond on the murder charge, the sheriff’s office said. A $5,000 bond was previously set on the weapons charge, according to jail records.
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This story was originally published March 25, 2026 at 11:16 AM.
