Deputies: Man told victim they were going fishing, then he drowned her

Deputies arrested a man on Monday after they say he drowned a woman in the Broad River not far from Interstate 20 on Saturday.

Michael Jason Pate, 33, has been charged with murder, according to the Richland County Sheriff’s Department.

Sheriff Leon Lott said in a news release that Pate’s girlfriend called the sheriff’s department at about 8 p.m. Saturday about a drowning.

The Columbia Fire Department recovered the body of Lindsay Kellah McKay, 37, at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday, according to Richland County Coroner Gary Watts. She was found in the rear of the Pine Valley subdivision, between the Broad River and Broad River Road. Watts said McKay died from drowning.

Pate told McKay they were going to the river to go fishing, Lott said. Investigators believe the two got into an argument, which turned into a physical fight, and ended with McKay’s death.

Investigators are working to determine if Pate planned the killing ahead of time or if it happened in the heat of the moment, sheriff’s spokesman Lt. Curtis Wilson said.

“It looks as though it was something that happened while they were out there, and escalated to this attack,” Wilson said.

Pate has been taken to the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center.

The most recent slaying by drowning in Richland County was a murder-suicide in 2014, Watts said. A vehicle traveling from downtown Columbia toward Cayce crashed through the Blossom Street bridge railing and plummeted about 50 feet into the Congaree River, killing two people.

Another drowning case took place in 1997, Watts said, when a man threw a 3-year-old into the Congaree River after killing the child’s mother.

This story was originally published May 31, 2016 at 11:39 AM.