Culture of violence on social media led to massacre at Columbiana mall, investigator testifies at preliminary hearing

LEXINGTON, SC (WIS) – The chaos at the Columbiana Centre mall over Easter weekend 2022 is spilling over into a Lexington County courtroom this week, where a man is making his case that he should be protected from prosecution despite firing his gun.

Jewayne Price is one of three defendants in connection with the mass shooting at the mall that left more than a dozen people injured, including nine with gunshot wounds.

He appeared before a Lexington County judge for a pretrial hearing this week and argued that he fired in self-defense.

As a basis for the hearing, Price's lawyers are relying on a relatively new legal theory in the state of South Carolina: the “Stand Your Ground Act.”

The 2006 law provides that citizens are “protected from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of deadly force” under certain limited circumstances.

After an afternoon in court that was at times controversial, the defense and the state concluded their closing arguments on Tuesday.

“I think we've gone way too far, there's no jury here,” Rick Hubbard, the 11th District Court prosecutor, said during Tuesday's hearing as he stood to object to a question from Price's defense attorney, Todd Rutherford. “Your honor understands what he's getting at. I think you got it on the first question. I think we can move on.”

The state called Sergeant Brian Zwolak, an investigator with the Lexington County Sheriff's Crime Stoppers Division, to the stand as an expert on violent crime information.

Despite the defense's objection, he was admitted as an expert witness.

Zwolak, who has extensive experience investigating gang violence, testified that Price, along with the other two co-defendants in the case, Amari Smith and Marquise Robinson, were involved in a culture of violence on social media.

According to Zwolak, the chaos that broke out in the crowded mall was an inevitable side effect of this.

“You're engaging in the activity, you're willingly engaging in that activity and that back and forth, and you know that the ultimate consequence is going to be that you're going to run into someone you've been going back and forth with,” he said. “Both sides regularly show in their social media posts that they're armed, flaunt the fact that they have firearms. So when you disrespect someone back and forth and argue back and forth, you get an altercation, both parties have guns, and it ends in a shooting.”

Rutherford questioned the witness’s credibility and conclusions, calling them “junk science.”

The state argues that Price helped create the danger on April 16, 2022, when he fired first.

Both sides agree that the 2018 killing of Amon Rice, a student-athlete at Lower Richland High School, played a role in the events at the mall.

The law firm alleges that there was an ongoing feud between Price and co-defendants who were close to Rice.

Price was one of more than 20 people charged in connection with Rice's death, but a grand jury declined to indict him and the charges were dropped.

Price's defense team argues that their client faced the wrath and targeting of Smith and Robinson for years after the incident.

“We know the weapon that [Price] “He had it with him and he used it,” Rutherford said. “If he hadn't done it, he would be dead.”

Zwolak said he reviewed direct messages on social media in which Price mocked opposing groups allied with Rice and made fun of Rice's death.

In one of the conversations in May 2019, a year after Rice's death, Price wrote in a group chat: “Nobody is hiding, I'm living my life the same as before.”

These interactions led to violence at the mall, Zwolak testified.

During cross-examination, Rutherford focused on this point, noting that there were no direct threats from Price toward the co-defendants during the entire four-year social media period under review.

“What posts did he make on social media that your investigation found fuelled tensions between him and other individuals?” he asked.

“I was referring to these messages,” Zwolak replied.

“Right, that’s why I asked you about the contributions,” Rutherford said.

“There were a lot of posts that had to do with gang-related topics that I didn't list here, but that would also lead to things like that,” Zwolak said.

Rutherford also criticized Hubbard for failing to clarify during direct questioning that the dialogues mentioned by Zwolak occurred in direct messages to Price's friends and were not public posts on Facebook.

Prosecutors also sought to undermine Price's credibility after he took the witness stand on Monday.

They tried to use the emergency call recordings and the telephone records of the defendant himself to prove that he was not actually “fearful for his life” in the minutes before the shooting, as he claimed.

Both sides will appear before Judge Walton McLeod again on Wednesday morning to discuss the Stand Your Ground law and its applicability.

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