“He shot f—ing first,” Boyd told the 911 operator. He claimed the same to witnesses who caught only glimpses of the confrontation. Boyd said it again to data-vars-link-type=”Manual” data-vars-anchor-text=”police”>police, describing how Spivey had earlier tried to run him off the road and waved a gun out the window. Boyd reacted by chasing Spivey at high speeds for nearly 9 miles before Spivey got out of his truck with a .45 caliber pistol in his hand and a belly full of beer and whiskey.
Spivey hollered at Boyd to stop following him. Then the shooting started.
No one saw who shot first, except for Boyd and his buddy, Bradley Williams. The two men fired 9mm pistols through the front windshield at Spivey, killing the 33-year-old insurance adjuster with a bullet Boyd said was his. Spivey fired wildly from inside his truck before collapsing dead on the console.
Boyd’s claim of self-defense protected him from arrest under South Carolina’s stand-your-ground law. He also was aided by Horry County officers, a new investigation by The Wall Street Journal found, based on 28 hours of police footage and recorded calls. Officers failed in their duty to guard the integrity of the crime scene, the evidence and witness accounts, the Journal found.
Boyd was allowed to speak to witnesses and make phone calls—to his lawyer and, surreptitiously, to the deputy police chief in charge of homicide investigations who promised him help.
Seven months after the fatal shooting, a state prosecutor decided it was a lawful self-defense homicide, saying Boyd and Williams acted out of fear for their lives.
A special prosecutor and a state grand jury are now re-examining the case, after Journal reporting raised questions about the homicide investigation, including why authorities appeared to ignore Boyd’s recorded calls discussing the killing. One indicated that Boyd himself set off the deadly confrontation—not out of fear, but in anger.
“I was, like, ‘He just ran me off the road and aimed a gun at Bradley’s head? F— this guy,’ and I chased him,” Boyd told his mother in a recorded call. “Oh, I was on his ass, and his truck couldn’t outrun my truck, and he knew it. So, yeah, he was terrified.”
Boyd and Williams have denied wrongdoing. Their defense team said the two acted in lawful self-defense.
The Horry County Police Department didn’t respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman previously said the department couldn’t comment because of the continuing investigation.
One officer racing to Camp Swamp Road spread the word that evening on Sept. 9, 2023: Boyd, a restaurant owner who served police free meals, was a big friend of law enforcement. A close enough friend, the Journal found, to bend the rules for, beginning with an unchallenged belief in Boyd’s claim that Spivey shot first.
To illustrate witness testimony, the Journal created a scale rendering, using police diagrams, measurements, video and photographs. The placement of Spivey’s figure is based on statements from Boyd and Frank McMurrough, the closest witness.
Here is a tour of the homicide scene.
In the span of half a minute, about 30 rounds were fired.
The Spivey family’s legal team commissioned an audio-forensic expert, specializing in gunshot detection, to analyze recordings of Boyd’s 911 call. The expert concluded that 29 shots came from Boyd’s truck. The Journal consulted with two audio experts who concurred.
The expert’s analysis couldn’t positively identify gunshots fired from outside the truck, but it detected three faint pops. It is plausible those were shots from another vehicle 30 to 40 yards away, according to the analysis.
Boyd’s defense lawyers contend the analysis proved nothing because Boyd’s truck had soundproofing, making it impossible to accurately record shots fired by Spivey.
After the last shot, Williams told Boyd, “God damn it, Weldon. Why couldn’t we f—ing leave him alone.”
Moments later, McMurrough walked to Boyd’s truck and asked, “Can I just check on him? I’m not gonna do nothing. I just wanna check on him.”
“Yeah. He f—ing shot at us,” Boyd said.
McMurrough returned to his truck and spoke again with the 911 operator. “I don’t know who shot first,” he said. “I don’t know who’s wrong or who’s right.”
Horry County police officer Kerry Higgs, first to arrive, immediately accepted Boyd’s self-defense claim. He took Boyd’s gun but not his phone, a deviation from department procedure that set the course for what happened over the next few hours.
6:11 p.m.
While Boyd was on the phone with his lawyer, Kenneth Moss, he repeated to Higgs that witnesses saw Spivey shoot first. Higgs radioed other first responders, saying, “I got multiple victims, witnesses stating that the victim had jumped out and brandished a pistol (and) shot at them.”
Yet Higgs, who arrived three minutes earlier, hadn’t spoken to anyone about what happened except Boyd and Williams.
Boyd, though, spoke with witnesses before and after police arrived, saying Spivey shot first. Police department protocol calls for separating witnesses to ensure their accounts aren’t influenced by others. An hour after police arrived, the watch commander admonished officers for failing that job.
6:17 p.m.
One paramedic, noting that Spivey was shot in the back, sounded skeptical. Higgs defended the self-defense claim.
6:27 p.m.
At 6:29 p.m., Boyd called a good friend, Brandon Strickland, the deputy police chief of Horry County. “I know that it’s self-defense, and we got witnesses that are all saying it’s self-defense,” Boyd said, asking for Strickland’s help. “I’m a f—ing nervous wreck, dude.”
Strickland said he would swing by, but “I gotta be real careful, you know what I’m saying?”
Minutes later, Boyd was on the phone again with Moss, a former attorney for Horry County. Moss was connected to many people in the area, including Sgt. Damon Vescovi, the second officer to arrive. Moss worked as the attorney for the nearby town of Loris, S.C., where Vescovi’s wife was on the city council.
Vescovi took Boyd’s phone and greeted Moss.
6:34 p.m.
Vescovi told Moss the killing sounded like self-defense based on the witnesses. Then Vescovi got off the phone and walked to his patrol car. He wrote a note and held it up for Boyd to read: “ACT LIKE A VICTIM. Camera.”
6:37 p.m.
Vescovi’s lawyer said his client didn’t intend to do anything illegal. Moss declined to comment.
Strickland called Boyd minutes later, apologizing that he couldn’t show up. He reassured Boyd that “I got the people coming that need to come.”
Soon after, officer Mark Johnson, who had been speeding to Camp Swamp Road, radioed to officers saying that Moss wanted to enter the crime scene. Johnson told his colleagues that Boyd, the owner of Buoys on the Boulevard restaurant in North Myrtle Beach, S.C., was “big time, pro-law enforcement.”
Johnson called Strickland and turned off his dashboard camera shortly after he answered.
7:01 p.m.
Police later learned Johnson mislabeled his dashcam footage, which prevented the recording from being included in the homicide investigation file. Johnson didn’t respond to requests for comment.
By 7:11 p.m., the police on Camp Swamp Road had turned off their body cameras at the prompting of a ranking officer.
For the next two hours, the only records from the immediate crime scene were from a handful of dashcams in patrol cars. They show the arrival of Alan Jones, the lead detective on call that night.
7:23 p.m.
At about 8 p.m., Jones said, “We’re trying to wrap this scene as fast as possible. We may even process him” at the police impound lot.
A deputy coroner came to Camp Swamp Road, and a coroner’s van was called to transport the body. Typically in a homicide case, the coroner arrives, assesses the body and takes photos before loading the corpse into a body bag and transferring it to a coroner’s van. Instead, the deputy coroner left the scene empty-handed.
The police report noted that because “heavy rain, thunder/lighting was in the horizon,” Spivey’s truck would be towed to the impound lot with his body inside.
The Horry County Coroner’s Office said the decision was based on the rain forecast and a request by police. Higgs’s dashcam showed a few drops of rain hitting the windshield of his patrol car about an hour after police arrived. Weather records show no measurable precipitation that night.
Experts, including two elected South Carolina coroners, said Spivey’s body appeared to have been illegally mishandled. They said the jostling of the body during the 25-mile tow trip would have ruined its value as evidence.
Vescovi was assigned to escort Boyd’s truck to the police impound lot. He instead took the job of following the flatbed that carried Spivey and his truck. Minutes after Vescovi turned off Camp Swamp Road behind the tow, the police bodycams started coming back on.
9:13 p.m.
Spivey’s cousin was the first of the family to reach Camp Swamp Road and asked where Spivey was. “Don’t tell ‘em where he’s going,” one of the officers said, “or how he got there.” The officer later went to speak to the cousin, who asked if Spivey had died. “I have no idea,” the officer said. “I’m sorry.”
Police revealed Spivey’s killing to the family after the arrival of Spivey’s sister, Jennifer Foley. “Apparently Scott was road raging with somebody else, and he tried shooting at them, and they fired back,” the watch commander said, echoing Boyd’s account. He didn’t say that Spivey’s body had been hauled away in his truck.
9:53 p.m.
The day after the shooting, Strickland called Boyd. “I was in the shadows last night,” he said. “You’re taken care of.” The deputy chief told Boyd that Spivey’s body was towed “to make sure that every i’s dotted, t’s crossed to clear you.”
Strickland’s lawyer said that Strickland’s claims and promises to Boyd were all bluster. Strickland was pressured to resign this year and Vescovi was fired over their actions in the case.
In October, South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson authorized Barry Barnette, an elected solicitor from another jurisdiction, to review the handling of the case and consider criminal charges, citing alleged misconduct in the police investigation. Barnette has since impaneled a state grand jury, his deputy said Monday, declining further comment.
It didn’t matter whether Spivey shot first for Boyd and Williams to seek legal protection under the state’s stand-your-ground law, said Wilson and his deputy Heather Weiss, the prosecutor who closed the case. The law allows the use of force against a deadly threat.
The Spivey family filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Boyd, 34, and Williams, 36. A civil court hearing to determine whether the shooting was lawful self-defense is set to begin Feb. 17.
In response to the lawsuit, lawyers for Boyd and Williams tried for months to coax McMurrough into appearing for a deposition to recount what he saw. McMurrough, a 38-year-old business owner in suburban Richmond, Va., told the Journal he ignored the requests because of the pressure he felt from Moss.
Moss called to try to explain Boyd’s actions, McMurrough said, recalling the conversation. “I felt like they wanted me to help him,” Boyd said. Moss sent McMurrough a copy of the statements he made to police to help him remember what he saw and what he said.
The shooting was “something I relived every day,” McMurrough said in the interview. “It’s a tape in my head I can replay. That’s why I wasn’t comfortable with the ‘Make sure you read your statement.’”
McMurrough sat for a deposition on Dec. 1, responding to a subpoena requested by the judge in the Spivey family’s lawsuit. Under oath, McMurrough repeated what he had told the Journal. He was driving with his wife on Camp Swamp Road when Spivey pulled to a halt ahead of him.
He slowed, and as he passed Spivey’s truck, McMurrough, a gun owner, said Spivey was holding his pistol down by his pants pocket, pointed toward the ground. The firearm was in a locked position, he said.
McMurrough said he drove past Boyd’s truck and saw him in the driver’s seat, gripping a pistol in both hands, pointing the barrel at the front windshield toward Spivey.
From his rearview mirror, McMurrough saw Spivey move his arm slightly, he said at the deposition, and then “all hell broke loose.”
METHODOLOGY
Write to Valerie Bauerlein at Valerie.Bauerlein@wsj.com, Brenna T. Smith at brenna.smith@wsj.com, Cam Pollack at cam.pollack@wsj.com, Peter Champelli at peter.champelli@wsj.com and Annie Ng at annie.ng@wsj.com
Crime-scene photographs, dashcam and bodycam footage by the Horry County Police Department.
Illustrations by Annie Ng/WSJ, Adobe Stock
