‘I can’t bring my son back’: Family remembers man killed outside Myrtle Beach area bar
Kelly Davis has fond memories of her nephew Starquan Washington.
He would always come to Davis’ home for Christmas, dressing up in the same holiday outfit as the family and going out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. He also brought people who didn’t have families over for Thanksgiving dinner.
“I can’t imagine another Christmas without him,” Davis said Wednesday. “Starquan was a good kid. He would give people the shirt off his back. He did his dirt sometimes, but at the end of the day, there wasn’t a Christmas he didn’t come by, there wasn’t a Thanksgiving he wasn’t here.”
The 23-year-old Longs man was killed early Wednesday morning outside a Myrtle Beach area bar.
A Myrtle Beach man, Kvon Tyrese Lawhorn, 24, now faces a murder charge in Washington’s death, Horry County Police said.
The death of Washington has left the Davis family and his mother, Jamella Washington, reeling.
For Davis, she wants people to know that Washington wasn’t “some young thug who went out gangbanging at a bar.”
“My nephew is not some thug who is out there causing trouble … being a part of society that is unproductive,” Davis said.
Davis said that Washington was working to try to support his young son.
Victim friends with the shooter
Washington was one of two people shot outside Barfield’s Bar & Grille, 4803 Highway 17 Bypass, about 2:10 a.m. Wednesday, police said. The other person received non-life-threatening injuries.
It is believed the shooting started after an altercation at the bar between the shooter and another person, family said. Washington was friends with the shooter, Davis said.
Washington’s cousin, Christopher Glenn, said Washington was at his house the night before the shooting and wanted Glenn to go with him to the bar. However, he didn’t go.
Glenn said Washington liked to go to the bar to socially connect because he liked to talk to others.
Davis said her son wonders if he would have gone with Washington that maybe he would’ve been OK.
But Davis wonders that “maybe if he was there, I would be grieving my son this evening.”
‘I can’t bring my son back’
Glenn describes Washington as someone who would look on the brighter side, funny and always had a smile on his face.
Jamella Washington said she got pregnant with her son when she was young and “that little boy brightened my world up.”
The family moved from Florida back to the Myrtle Beach area when Washington was young and he graduated from Socastee High School.
“He was my everything. And he meant the world to me,” Jamella Washington said. “If they are trying to paint a bad picture about him, they can’t. He was a victim. He’s a beautiful life gone.
“I can’t bring my son back. I can’t shed any more tears.”
