Hardeeville man out on bond for murder arrested for sexually abusing young girl, cops say
A Hardeeville man out on bond for murder was charged Wednesday for sexually abusing a young girl, according to the Hardeeville Police Department. The arrest was part of a larger drug bust at a downtown residence.
Police found and arrested Nayquan Gadson, 21, while executing a search warrant at a home on Furman Street early Wednesday morning. Along with two drug charges, he was charged on an outstanding warrant for second-degree criminal sexual conduct with a minor. Investigators say he contacted a girl online and “lured her” to a residence in Hardeeville where he sexually assaulted her, according to Chief of Police Sam Woodward.
Woodward would not comment further on the victim’s identity, although state statutes specify the charge is applied when a victim is less than 16 years old. The chief also would not answer questions about the date of the alleged offense.
Officers discovered large amounts of drugs in the Furman Street home: cocaine, marijuana, fentanyl and meth. They arrested three other Hardeeville men on drug charges — Rocky Gadson, 43; Necholas Knight, 39 and Leon Williams, 57 — all of whom lived in the house with Nayquan, Woodward said.
At the time of his arrest Wednesday, the 21-year-old Gadson was out on bond for the November 2022 killing of Briener Daniel Puerta Gonzalez, 19, who was found with gunshot wounds in the parking lot of Hilton Head’s Northridge Plaza. Sheriff’s deputies arrested Gadson and a possible accessory in early December, saying the murder occurred while the two men tried to rob Puerta Gonzalez at gunpoint outside of the shopping center.
In March 2023, Gadson bailed out of the Beaufort jail on a $50,000 surety bond. The bond conditions, laid out by S.C. Circuit Court Judge Brooks P. Goldsmith, stipulated that he must wear an ankle monitor and couldn’t own firearms, possess narcotics or contact his co-defendant.
In accordance with a new state law, Gadson has been charged with an additional felony for violating his bond conditions — allegedly “committing a violent crime while under a pretrial release order for a previous violent crime,” which is punishable by up to five years in prison. The bill amending portions of South Carolina’s bond system was signed into law by Gov. Henry McMaster last summer and aims to block the state’s proverbial “revolving door,” a term used by lawmakers and law enforcement to describe the previous ease by which repeat offenders can bond out of jail after violent offenses.
Gadson’s murder charge and more than a dozen other criminal offenses are still pending in Beaufort and Jasper County courts. Three charges stem from a Fourth of July weekend shooting in 2021, when he was charged with felony assault and battery for reportedly shooting a man and woman in the parking lot of the Hilton Head Gardens apartments. Following that arrest, he was released three days later on a $5,000 bond, judicial records show.
