Chester SC Sheriff: Suspect surrenders after officer-involved shooting, standoff
A standoff suspect in rural Chester County free on bail from an August domestic violence arrest who was part of an officer-involved shooting with law enforcement Saturday has surrendered, officials said.
The suspect, Gerald Williams Jr., 36, is charged with resisting arrest with a deadly weapon, said Grant Suskin, spokesman for the Chester County Sheriff’s Office. Other charges are pending, Suskin said.
Williams, the suspect, was armed with some type of gun during the incident, said Suskin.
Williams was arrested in August on a charge of first-degree domestic violence, according to Suskin and South Carolina court records. After that arrest on Aug. 26, Williams was released on a $25,000 bond on Aug. 27, court records show.
The standoff went on for more than eight hours until Williams was taken into custody shortly before noon, officials said.
Chester County Sheriff Max Dorsey said Saturday afternoon that the situation was resolved peacefully without any injuries to deputies or the suspect. The State Law Enforcement Division assisted with the hours-long standoff and is handling the shots-fired investigation because of the discharge of a weapon, Dorsey said.
Dorsey declined to say if deputies fired weapons during the incident because SLED is handling the investigation.
It remains unclear who fired shots at the scene. Chester sheriff officials confirmed in written statements released to the public on Facebook and Twitter social media that there was an “officer-involved shooting,” but have not released any details on who fired guns or how many shots were fired.
A sheriff official post said: “Last night around 3 a.m., there was an officer involved shooting at High Tower Road in Fort Lawn. No one was injured, and we are negotiating with the individual involved.”
It is standard policy for an outside agency such as SLED to investigate any officer-involved shooting, Dorsey said.
Dorsey said no other information will be released, pending SLED’s investigation.
SLED spokesman Tommy Crosby said Saturday that Chester deputies were responding to a 911 call when the shots were fired.
“Shots were fired during a confrontation between a man and deputies from Chester County Sheriff’s Office,” Crosby said in a written statement. “The suspect retreated to their residence where a multi-hour standoff ensued.”
The incident started around 3 a.m. at a home on Hightower Road near the Chester County town of Fort Lawn, according to Chester sheriff officials.
No information has been released about whether the shooting part of the standoff was captured on police body camera or dash camera video.
The officer-involved shooting in Chester County happened a year after a Chester man was shot and killed by police outside a Walmart in Chester. South Carolina prosecutors said the officers from the Chester Police Department acted in self-defense in that November 2019 shooting, but the family of the victim filed a wrongful death and civil rights lawsuit after the man was killed.
The incident in Chester County was the 46th officer involved shooting in South Carolina in 2020, according to SLED.
Check back for updates on this developing story.
This story was originally published November 21, 2020 at 3:17 PM with the headline "Chester SC Sheriff: Suspect surrenders after officer-involved shooting, standoff."
