After three fatal shootings in one month, Longs area families, neighbors search for answers

Three men shoveled soft dirt around a white slab Friday afternoon.

As sunlight filtered through the trees behind St. Paul AME Church, John Guiles finished the same task he’s had for nearly 30 years. It’s the job that never quite feels normal, and the one he’s undertaken twice in recent weeks for young men from the Longs area.

He filled in another grave.

“It never gets easy,” he said. “You never get used to it.”

The name on this marker is Quentin Reeves, born April 12, 1997. The North Myrtle Beach High School senior died on April 18. He was shot once in the chest at a nightclub less than a mile from his home.

When it comes to tragedy, the Longs region of Horry County often sees more than its share. But lately the crime has been particularly violent. Since Feb. 16, there have been nine shootings in the area, including three murders in less than a month’s time.

▪ On March 22, Don Terrell Simmons, a 28-year-old from Loris, was gunned down outside Club Ciroc, an unlicensed nightspot in a shopping plaza on S.C. 9. No arrests have been made in the case.

▪ On March 27, Terrance Wilson, 20, died in a shooting at Club 13 on Freemont Road. No one has been charged in that case.

▪ On April 18, a gun battle erupted at The Party Shop on S.C. 90. Police found 18-year-old Reeves lying facedown. Four people have been arrested in connection with his murder.

Of the 11 homicides in Horry County this year, four have happened at Longs addresses.

The violence isn’t confined to nightclubs, either. In one case, two men at a wedding reception got into an argument. The dispute ended in gunfire.

Police say they aren’t sure if any of the recent shootings are related. They have noticed another problem in Longs.

“We have seen an upturn in gang activity and instances of gang affiliations,” said Lt. Raul Denis with the Horry County Police Department. “However, we can’t really say one was retribution for the other.”

Solicitor Jimmy Richardson did say he’s confident Reeves’ death is not connected to the two unsolved March murders. Other than that, he could provide few specifics about the recent cases. Generally speaking, he said, the region has long grappled with three challenges.

“It is drugs, gangs and guns,” he said. “That’s never a good combination.”

A question of community

Ask locals about the recent string of shootings and some become defensive. Not all of this bloodshed happened in Longs, they say.

In a sense, they’re correct. Police records for Longs include unincorporated hamlets like Wampee, Poplar, Freemont and Red Bluff.

“It’s not the same area,” said Ulysses DeWitt, a former Horry County councilman who was born and raised in the community he calls Wampee-Poplar. “My post office is Longs, but I don’t live in Longs.”

Driving through Longs, the difference is obvious. There’s the Longs of 100-year-old farms, lush golf courses and new subdivisions. And there’s the Longs of dilapidated trailers with pit bulls roaming in front yards.

“They’re in different community areas, but it’s a Longs address,” said Horry County Councilman Paul Prince, whose district includes Longs. “All of us that’s been here 50, 60, 70 years know them by communities, not by Longs.”

Despite the distinction, Prince acknowledges that when it comes to the recent shootings, there’s “not too many miles between all three of them.”

He’s correct. The greatest distance between any of the three murder sites is less than 14 miles.

Prince said he’s called the police chief and the county administrator about sending more officers to patrol Longs.

“I’m very serious about getting in there and putting more police in there,” he said, though he admitted a stronger law enforcement presence has its limits. “I know they can’t stop somebody if all of a sudden they’ve got a gun out there somewhere at nighttime and want to pull it out and shoot somebody.”

Although Longs has made headlines recently, the solicitor said parts of that area have long been plagued by a drug culture and gun violence.

“Freemont and Poplar are about as bad as you’ll find in unincorporated Horry County,” Richardson said. “If police officers didn’t give me an answer as to where to go and they said we’ve got a murder, I’m thinking [there].”

Richardson said the young people involved in the shootings don’t grasp the harm they’re causing.

“They don’t seem to have any concept that death is final,” he said. “You can’t take it back. There’s no reason to be that mad at anybody.”

DeWitt also understands there’s been tragedy lately. He owns the property the The Party Shop sits on.

“You’re doggone right it was a bad situation,” he said. “But how do you remedy it? How do you stop it?”

A mother’s search for answers

Sometimes late at night, Lenora Wilson heads to her rocking chair to pray.

She shuffles over the green carpet, past the angel figurines, family photos and pictures of Moses and Jesus that fill her tidy mobile home on Pine Needle Road.

Wilson then asks for answers and strength that seem elusive.

“That’s a mother’s biggest question,” she said. “Why?”

It’s not the first time street violence has left her here, pleading with God. Fifteen years ago, Wilson’s oldest son, Troy Riggins, was gunned down across the street. He was shot seven times and found in the driver’s seat of his Lincoln Continental parked at Bruce’s Country Kitchen.

Last month, it was her youngest, 20-year-old Terrance Wilson, who was shot at Club 13 just around the corner.

“He was so sweet,” she said of Terrance Wilson. “He was just a darling baby. And of course when they’re away from you, they act up. But I don’t think he would act up to the point where anybody would have to kill him.”

The mother keeps her youngest son’s room similar to the way he left it. Tiger stuffed animal on the bed. High school graduation tassel dangling from the mirror.

“That was my baby,” she said. “There wasn’t a morning that I didn’t go back there and give him a hug and kiss and let him know I loved him. After he’d come home in the evening time ... he’d come all the way to my bedroom and give me a hug and kiss and say, ‘How you doing, Mother? I love you.’”

Lenora Wilson perseveres the same way she has through each tragedy. She studies her Bible, writing down passages of scripture on notebook paper and storing them in a teal binder. When doubt and sadness hover, she flips to the verses that bring her comfort. She often reads from the Book of James:

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything (James 1:2-4).”

Sometimes, Lenora Wilson asks people in the neighborhood if they know anything about Terrance Wilson’s death. What made someone so enraged with her son? No one has an answer.

“I’m just waiting on something,” she said. “I just keep the faith and pray and hope the Lord will allow a breakthrough to come through.”

Lenora Wilson said her son witnessed the first March murder — the killing of Don Terrell Simmons — and the sight troubled him.

“He was quiet that whole week,” she said. “He was saying to his Dad, ‘Dad, they didn’t have to kill him like that.’ So I’m thinking that he was kind of terrified.”

Even if she knew who murdered her son, Lenora Wilson said she would forgive the killer. She encourages the sons and daughter she has left to do the same.

“It’s hard for them,” she said. “There are times that they want to retaliate, but I let them know we don’t do like that. We don’t fight like the world fights. We fight with love.”

‘You get the feeling like they’re your own’

Quentin Reeves was a regular customer at the IGA on S.C. 90.

In a tiny place like Poplar, everyone is a regular.

Latoya Willard didn’t know the teen well, but the cashier usually chatted with him when he’d stop by for a drink or a snack.

“He seemed like a nice guy,” she said.

Even though she wasn’t close to the teen, Willard knew his funeral was 2 p.m. Friday at Mt. Calvary No. 2 Missionary Baptist Church in Brooksville, another unincorporated place near Little River.

“Everybody’s kind of talking about him,” she said.

Lately, she said, it seems like crime in the area has gotten worse. And three murders in less than a month?

“That’s terrible,” she said. “I can believe it, though.”

Scores of people attended Reeves’ service. Many followed the funeral precession down Highway 111 and stopped by the cemetery at St. Paul AME.

And after the mourners walked away, Edward Orange, Devin Cuttino and Guiles were left to do their work — burying another young man from northern Horry County.

“It’s close to home,” said Cuttino, who is 20, the same age as Terrance Wilson, the man their company buried a few weeks earlier. “It gets rough sometimes.”

None of the men knew Reeves, but they knew what happened to him. And what happened to Wilson. And what happened to Simmons.

After a while, the pain begins to seem familiar.

“Sometimes you look at these kids,” Guiles said, “and you get the feeling like they’re your own.”

This story was originally published April 26, 2015 at 1:00 AM with the headline "After three fatal shootings in one month, Longs area families, neighbors search for answers."