Three men are dead, and another was taken to the hospital with injuries, after a shooting in South Carolina that stemmed from a land dispute.
According to the Miami Herald, the shooting took place around 8 PM on September 27th. The four men involved were near a home on Griffin Road in the Woodruff area. In a statement from the Spartanburg County Sheriff's Office, it was confirmed that the injured man had been transported to a hospital in Simpsonville via a private vehicle. The injuries sustained and eventually treated were not life-threatening.
Upon the arrival of the first sheriff deputies to the scene, the three other victims of the shooting had already died. Deputies then began to separate and interview witnesses of the shooting. It was then that it became clear the shooting was a result of a dispute over who had rights to be on a particular piece of hunting land.
Tragically, some of the witnesses of the scene were family members of the deceased. Moreover, relatives of Jeremy Faulkner, a 34-year-old man from Woodruff, say he died defending his friends. Paul Higgins, who was 38 years old, was also from Woodruff and died in the shooting. The other man who died in the incident was a 22-year-old from Greenville, named Nicolas Long.
Investigators have yet to confirm what caused the land dispute to turn deadly, or how many individuals fired weapons. Regardless of what is learned, the incident should never have turned violent.
Hunting Land Dispute Leads to Fatal Shooting in South Carolina
Friday's shooting in South Carolina is another in a growing list of hunting-related shootings. In January 2021, Reelfoot Lake in west Tennessee made national headlines, when two men were killed while hunting. The entire story of that fateful day on Reelfoot Lake has always been hard to follow. One man survived, two were shot dead in their blind, and their killer was found dead in the lake.
Friday's shooting should never have happened. No hunting land is ever worth someone's life. Much like the shooting at Reelfoot, many questions still exist as to how this disagreement could have become so deadly.
