Man arrested in NC suspected in Horry County murder that officials did not disclose to public
A man was arrested in North Carolina on Thursday morning, suspected of a murder that took place in Horry County on June 17 — a homicide that Horry County officials never disclosed to the public.
Jaylon Hemingway, 18, was arrested just across the North Carolina border in Tabor City. Hemingway was booked into Columbus County Detention Center at 8:31 a.m. Thursday, the Columbus County Sheriff’s Office inmate query department confirmed.
The homicide Hemingway is accused of took place June 17 on Freemont Road in the Longs area of Horry County, according to an incident report from the Horry County Police Department.
Horry County police tweeted afterward that there was a shooting, but did not mention that it was a homicide.
The Horry County Coroner’s Office didn’t publicly identify the body until Thursday afternoon after receiving questions from The Sun News.
When asked over the phone about the identity of the homicide victim and why the coroner’s office did not put out a news release — which is typical with homicide victims — Horry County Coroner Robert Edge initially said his records showed nobody was killed on June 17 — or on the following two days.
Edge then reviewed his records a second time and made a call to The Sun News. Edge determined that Chaquan Bellamy, 26, was killed on June 17. Bellamy died from a single gunshot wound to the head, Edge said.
“Might have been one that slipped through the cracks,” Edge said Friday, speaking on why no press release was put out about Bellamy’s killing. “It’s a slip-up is all I can tell you.”
Police records show that three Horry County police officers responded to a reported shooting on the 700 block of Freemont Road in Longs on June 17. Officers found Bellamy lying in the driveway next to a dark blue Jeep Latitude that was still running. The Horry County Coroner’s Office also responded to the scene, according to an Horry County police report.
A police officer reached into the cab of the Jeep, turned off the ignition and placed the car key in the driver’s seat, according to the incident report.
“No other manipulation of the vehicle was performed,” according to the Horry County police report. A police officer collected information from the car’s driver and two other witnesses.
All information relating to the victim was redacted from the police report. Additionally, about seven lines of text from the narrative portion of the incident report were completely redacted.
On June 17, the Horry County Police Department tweeted about a shooting in the Freemont Road area that occurred about 5:30 a.m. The tweet stated that one person was shot. “There is no threat to the community,” the tweet stated.
The Horry County Police Department tweet made no mention of a killing.
The Sun News sent a series of questions via text message to Mikayla Moskov, spokesperson for the Horry County Police Department. Questions included why the homicide was not mentioned in the tweet about the shooting and why police told the public there was no threat to the community.
“An incident can’t be classified as murder until there’s evidence that the death occurred with malice aforethought. A shooting that has just occurred is simply a shooting,” Moskov wrote in a text message.
Earlier this year, Moskov told The Sun News that when Horry County police say there is no threat to the community, that typically means a shooting was accidental or self-inflicted.
“What I have mentioned about accidental and self-inflicted shootings previously is that, unless there was another person involved or a community risk, we typically don’t even tweet them out,” Moskov said Thursday.
“You can generally assume that, if HCPD notes something is fatal, it’s either because the coroner confirmation and notification has already occurred, or there was a community risk.”
Correction: This story has been corrected to show that neither the Horry County Police Department nor the Horry County Coroner’s Office specified that the shooting was fatal.
This story was originally published August 6, 2021 at 11:45 AM.
