Horry County solicitor reacts to guilty plea in deadly Donny’s Saloon shooting

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson gave his reaction Friday after a man pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a deadly 2021 shooting at a Myrtle Beach bar.

Jermaine Gattison pleaded guilty on July 16 and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Gattison’s charge is in connection to the death of Jas’ier Wilson of Surfside Beach at Donny’s Saloon. He recently had a mistrial declared when he was on trial for murder.

After three days of trial and hours of deliberation, the judge declared a mistrial when the jury couldn’t come to a decision.

“It didn’t shock me that it was a mistrial,” Richardson said. “What we had with Gattison was unusual. Someone came in and completely annihilated the crime scene before the police got there.”

According to Richardson, besides the crime scene being cleaned up, part of the tape was deleted, and no autopsy was performed. He said those are all things that could’ve hung the jury on a decision.

“All of that was weighed out and then he pled to voluntary, which is probably what he would’ve been convicted of,” he said.

Richardson said through breaking down information, they learned Wilson fired the first shots, which is a criminal charge. He said they negotiated the eight years because they had already tried it.

“It doesn’t speak to the loss of life, but it does speak to the facts of the case and what would’ve come before the jury the second time,” he said.

Richardson said even though Wilson shot first, Gattison left the bar to get his firearm. From there, he said Gattison’s shots weren’t out of self-defense as much as it was heat of passion.

“Now, what the victim did in this case was certainly not worth a death penalty, but that’s what Gattison gave him,” he said.

Richardson said both sides, the judge and the original jury came together to negotiate the sentence for Gattison.

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Jackie LiBrizzi is a multimedia journalist at News13. Jackie is originally from Hamilton, New Jersey, and was raised in Piedmont, South Carolina. Jackie joined the News13 team in June 2023 after she graduated as a student-athlete from the University of South Carolina in May 2023. Follow Jackie on X, formerly Twitter, Facebook , or Instagram , and read more of her work he r e .

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