Girl’s death grim part of trafficking in Horry County. How many others are there?
When an 11-year-old girl was brutally beaten to death behind the gates of a Myrtle Beach community in June 2025, it sparked a human trafficking investigation that would lead to the arrests of six people.
The case made headlines as more information slowly came to light about how the girl and her siblings came to be in the care of her killer, performing unpaid cleaning labor at medical centers in the area.
While the tragic case was a shock to the community, it also followed patterns familiar to those who regularly investigate human trafficking cases.
A’Kyri Bell, the girl whose untimely death led to the Horry County investigation, was one of hundreds of juvenile human trafficking victims identified by the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division statewide.
The case was one of over 300 in South Carolina that were opened in 2025, revealed in the recently released annual report by the South Carolina Attorney General’s Office.
Horry County remains among the top counties in the state for human trafficking cases.
How victims fall to human trafficking
Human trafficking doesn’t always look like it does in the movies. In fact, cases where victims are kidnapped by complete strangers and taken far from their homes are quite rare.
“A lot of times it is someone that they know,” Captain Sherri Smith of the Horry County Sheriff’s Office explained. Typically, the person trafficking victims is a family member, a close family friend or another trusted individual.
In A’Kyri’s case, she and her siblings were brought from Texas to Myrtle Beach by a family member — her father. It remains unclear how A’Kyri’s father knew the people he dropped her off with, but investigators have shared that they are not closely related to the children.
In some other cases, victims meet their traffickers online and get “groomed” or deceived by them, Smith said.
Often times, the victims of human trafficking are minors who are in some way dependent on their traffickers. But even for victims who may seem like they could more easily leave a trafficking situation, trauma bonding, similar to Stockholm Syndrome, can set in and keep them stuck, Smith explained.
This appeared to take place in A’Kyri’s situation. A’Kyri and her siblings were not only minors who had been dropped off in a new state by family — they also began to call their primary Camisha McGaskey “mama,” despite her lack of relation to them and her repeated abuses, investigators previously shared.
McGaskey, 31, would eventually be arrested and charged for A’Kyri’s death.
Where does trafficking happen in SC, and what are the signs?
It may seem like coastal areas with transient tourist economies such as those in Horry County would be more prone to human trafficking. During the height of tourist season, which brings nearly 20 million people to the Myrtle Beach area, people come and go from out of state daily.
However, data in the 2025 annual report puts Horry County relatively on par with other similarly sized counties.
Greenville, Richland and Lexington counties are three inland South Carolina spots that received higher numbers of trafficking tips than Horry County. Greenville County topped the list with 35 tips in 2025.
Greenville County had nine human trafficking charges opened in 2025, while Horry and Charleston counties each had 10. This doesn’t include any pending charges in other investigations.
All 10 of the charges in Horry County appear to be related to A’Kyri’s case, as McGaskey and her accomplice, Margaret Roberson, were each charged with five counts of trafficking in persons. The pair made five children, who appear to be A’Kyri and her siblings, perform unpaid labor.
This means that other large counties in the state saw higher numbers than Horry County, despite being much further from the coast and tourist hubs like Myrtle Beach.
“I don’t believe that we have any more trafficking than anywhere else in the state,” Smith observed.
Smith added that an important part of the trafficking investigation process is receiving tips from those who see suspicious behavior. She encouraged anyone witnessing potential human trafficking to send in a tip, which can be done through the Coastal Region Human Trafficking Task Force’s recently released mobile app.
Signs of human trafficking can include indications of abuse, poor hygiene, malnourishment, fatigue, being dressed inappropriately for climate or age, having little control over finances or identification, having large amounts of debt and more.
The most common places where labor trafficking takes place are small businesses or retail locations, as opposed to hotels for sexual trafficking.
Human trafficking report sheds light on Horry County, state trends
In 2025, SLED investigated 315 tips of human trafficking cases, identifying 323 total victims statewide — 89 of whom were adults, and 234 of whom were minors, according to the annual report. Seventeen of those tips were investigated in Horry County.
Smith serves as a regional chair on the Human Trafficking Task Force, and said year after year, it is primarily juvenile females who are the victims of trafficking. Aside from that, she explained, demographics vary widely, and human trafficking can impact anyone regardless of their race, income or other factors.
In data collected by the Department of Social Services on minor victims of human trafficking, 2025 numbers show that 141 recorded minor victims were sex trafficked in the state, while 15 were labor trafficked and three were trafficked for both. Of those victims, 138 were female and 21 were male. The majority of these victims were between the ages of 15 and 18.
Information has not been released about the 17 tips investigated in Horry County or whether they truly turned out to be human trafficking cases. The only Horry County case where human trafficking charges were opened in 2025 appears to be A’Kyri’s case. The cases for all six of the defendants involved in the investigation remain open.
What happened in the deadly 2025 Horry County labor trafficking case
Like many human trafficking victims, A’Kyri and her siblings were brought to Horry County by a family member. Their father dropped them off with a caregiver they called “mama,” but who had little, if any, relation to them.
That caregiver, McGaskey, has been charged in A’Kyri’s death. A’Kyri died of head wounds, according to the coroner’s office.
It was the investigation into A’Kyri’s mysterious death that led investigators to discover that human trafficking was taking place.
Horry County Schools previously confirmed to The Sun News that A’Kyri was enrolled in the school system during her time in the area. Investigators also found that she and at least four other minors were forced to provide unpaid cleaning services at medical centers in the Conway area. Sex trafficking was not suspected in this case, The Sun News previously reported.
The children were staying at a five-bedroom home in the gated Sago Plantation community in the Myrtle Beach area.
McGaskey was also reportedly striking a 15-year-old girl and a 15-year-old boy with various objects as well as her hands and feet, which was discovered during the investigation into A’Kyri’s death, according to arrest warrants. McGaskey also allegedly caused harm to multiple children in the presence of her 12-year-old daughter, who was also in the house, The Sun News previously reported.
She remains incarcerated in the J. Reuben Long Detention Center without bail and is charged with murder, human trafficking, as well as additional charges.
McGaskey wasn’t the only one arrested in the case. Lakesha Burnett, Alantis Thomas, Alexandria Thomas and Darnell Dearmas were all charged with multiple counts each of unlawful conduct toward a child in the case. Roberson also faces human trafficking charge.
Dearmas, 20, and Alantis Thomas, 22, have each been charged with unlawful conduct toward a child in the case for standing by as McGaskey allegedly abused children, as is Burnett, who allowed her 14-year-old daughter to witness the events, according to court documents.
Roberson, 56, is accused of knowingly allowing McGaskey’s abuse. Alexandria Thomas, 20, is charged with placing a child in her custody at risk.
Burnett Alexandria Thomas and Alantis Thomas are out on home detention, according to online arrest records, while Dearmas and Roberson remain in custody .
