Just after midnight on September 2, 2022, a call brought law enforcement to Dewitt Road in the Longs area of Horry County, South Carolina, where a person was found lying in the roadway. The victim was identified as Berlie Michael III, a 51-year-old man from Little River, and investigators said he died at the scene from gunshot injuries. The killing was treated as a homicide, and an autopsy was planned at the Medical University of South Carolina as authorities began working to piece together
what had happened on that dark stretch of road.
In the first days after Michael was found, the public picture was spare: police confirmed only that gunshot wounds were involved and asked anyone who knew something—about Michael himself or about the moments leading up to his death—to come forward. With few details released, the case hung in that uneasy space where a life has been taken, but the “who” and “why” remain just out of reach, known only to the person who pulled the trigger and whoever might have been close enough to hear or see the truth.
More than two years later, the investigation culminated in a courtroom outcome. On March 12, 2025, Ny’quan Zy’quez Chestnut of Longs pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter through a negotiated plea and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The sentencing took place with Circuit Court Judge Benjamin Culbertson presiding, and prosecutors identified in reports as senior assistant solicitor Seth Oskin and assistant solicitor Anthony DiChiara handling the case. The court terms required Chestnut to serve 85% of the sentence before becoming eligible for parole, and the case had been scheduled for trial in May 2025 before the plea resolved it.
In explaining the plea and sentence, the prosecution described a backdrop of drugs and a dispute over a debt Chestnut believed Michael owed him—an argument that escalated into a fatal decision and left Michael dead on the roadway. Prosecutors said Michael’s family accepted the guilty plea and the sentence, expressing that it brought a measure of justice, while also crediting investigators for the work that carried the case from an early-morning discovery on Dewitt Road to a conviction and decades behind bars.
