‘I’m thinking my mom was dead:’ Woman recounts night of terror in Surfside Beach neighborhood

HORRY COUNTY, S.C. (WBTW) — A bullet-riddled TV.

A severed gas line in the kitchen.

Shattered glass on a sliding door.

Holes punched into a wall above a mirror.

Images of a chaotic night that could have ended in unspeakable tragedy are everywhere inside a South Reindeer Road house that was the centerpiece of a Sept. 12 shooting spree authorities called “mass mayhem” and ended with the arrest of 60-year-old Neil Wade Brown.

“I know she’s grateful to be alive. But it’s very upsetting to walk into your home and it doesn’t look like your home anymore,” Amber Urban, whose mother was among Brown’s victims, told News13 on Monday.

Urban said she got a call around 9 p.m. from a neighbor saying they heard multiple gunshots coming from her mother’s home.

“I immediately jumped in my car. The last thing I saw when on her (mother’s) cameras her ex-boyfriend walk into her house with two guns,” Urban said. “I’m thinking my mom was dead. It was very scary. It was probably the scariest moment of my life.”

A News13 crew was on scene the night of the incident, where a heavy police presence including a SWAT team and hostage negotiators were deployed.

Urban said once Brown got inside her mother’s house, he held her and a friend at gunpoint, but they were both able to escape to a neighboring property.

News13 reviewed surveillance footage from that evening, but Urban didn’t want to share it publicly as the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division continues its investigation.

Video shows Brown walking up to the home with what police said were a pair of 9-millimeter handguns. While Urban’s mother and the other person ran to a neighbor’s home, the friend was shot in the hip.

Minutes later, as the neighbor was trying to lock a door, video shows Brown shooting through it multiple times, striking the neighbor’s leg.

“He walked back to my mom’s house, and he barricaded himself in. He closed the garage and started shooting the walls, shot her TV, he shot her couch. There were at least 20 bullet holes in the walls, her whole house,” Urban said.

Urban says Brown at some point got behind the stove and severed its gas line.

Video footage shows Brown in the backyard, exchanging gunfire with officers. Authorities said nobody was hurt.

Urban says that night wasn’t the first time Brown fired a gun at Urban’s mother. About a month earlier, he shot into a closet wall that backs up to a bathroom while the woman was showering.

She wasn’t hit. Brown was later arrested and released on bond before Urban’s mother kicked him out.

Urban said the burst of violence left the entire community shaken.

“This wasn’t just my mom and the neighbor. I think everyone in the neighborhood kind of experienced it. Everyone was scared,” she said.

Urban recently launched a GoFundMe to help her mother and friend with medical bills, personal belongings and repairs.

“It’s not really fair that they’re left with this huge mess and a gunshot wound and just the traumatic event itself,” she said.

Brown remains in custody at J. Reuben Long Detention Center. News13 has reached out to SLED to confirm Urban’s account, but hasn’t heard back yet.

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Adrianna Lawrence is a multimedia journalist at News13. Adrianna is originally from Virginia Beach, Virginia, and joined the News13 team in June 2023 after graduating from Virginia Commonwealth University in May 2023. Keep up with Adrianna on Instagram, Facebook , and X, formerly Twitter . You can also read more of her work, here .

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Adam Benson joined the News13 digital team in January 2024. He is a veteran South Carolina reporter with previous stops at the Greenwood Index-Journal, Post & Courier and The Sun News in Myrtle Beach. Adam is a Boston native and University of Utah graduate. Follow Adam on X, formerly Twitter, at @AdamNewshound12 . See more of his work here .

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