Conway police give update on 2 homicide investigations, urge public to help
CONWAY, S.C. (WBTW) — Conway police conducted a news conference Friday morning to talk about two recent homicides, including last week’s shooting that killed an 18-year-old Carolina Forest High School student.
Ja’Mir Johnson was pronounced dead at the scene of the shooting near a school bus stop at Rufus and 8th Avenue. authorities said. It happened at about 7:30 a.m. on Feb. 2 and was witnessed by Carolina Forest High School and Blackwater Middle School students.
No arrests have been made, but police released a surveillance photo of a “vehicle of interest” as authorities continued to look for leads in the case.
Police Chief Dale Long urged the public for help in the 25-minute news conference.
“We released information with the photo of a car, asking if anybody knew anything at all about that car,” he said. “We have not had a single call of anybody saying ‘well I’ve seen a car like that or I know where a car like that is at.’ It is not possible that somebody in this community does not know who that car belongs to.”
In the earlier case, Ty-Ree Graham, 25, of Conway, died on Jan. 11, a day after he was wounded in a shooting in the area of Hemingway Street. No arrests have been made in the case.
Long said during the news conference that officers recovered 14 shell casings in the area of the Rufus Street shooting and two at the scene on Hemingway Street.
Long said they’re working to determine if the two shootings are linked, but that they haven’t found any evidence of a connection to this point.
To this point, Long said he thinks the two shootings are isolated incidents and that there’s no threat to the public.
Long is, however, still unsure of the motive behind both incidents.
“We have not had anybody who has come up and said ‘this person was in a gang, this person was in a rival gang.’ So, we’re investigating that because there is the potential that it is,” he said. “As far as motive goes, you know, that is something that gets developed as we get closer and closer to a person, is the ‘why.’ Usually, the ‘who’ is the first thing we try to solve and then once we know who did it, then we ask, ‘OK, why’d you do it?'”
A $5,000 reward is offered to anyone who has information on the cases. Long said he’s tired of the “hearsay” and needs evidence.
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Dennis Bright is a Digital Producer at News13. He joined the team in May 2021. Dennis is a West Virginia native and a graduate of Marshall University in Huntington, West Virginia. Follow Dennis on, Facebook, X, formerly Twitter, and read more of his work here.
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Caleb is a digital producer at News13. Caleb joined the team in January 2023 after graduating from Liberty University. He is from Northern Virginia. Follow Caleb on X, formerly Twitter, and read more of his work here.
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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 here.
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