In the spring of what should have been a season of celebration, the life of 17-year-old Bertrand Troy Ganaway III was tragically cut short. A senior at Eau Claire High School in Columbia, South Carolina, he was just a week away from his graduation. On the afternoon of Saturday, May 21, 2022, the promise of his future was extinguished by an act of gun violence.
Around 5 p.m.
that day, deputies from the Richland County Sheriff's Department were dispatched to the 300 block of Saddletrail Road. There, they discovered a distressing scene: both Ganaway and an 18-year-old companion had been shot. Emergency services transported both teenagers to a local hospital. While the 18-year-old survived, Bertrand Troy Ganaway III succumbed to his injuries, his life ending just as it was about to truly begin. The community, especially his fellow students and the faculty of Richland 1 School District, was left to grapple with the senseless loss of a young man on the cusp of a significant milestone.
In the days that followed, the Richland County Sheriff's Department launched an investigation into the shooting. Their efforts led to the identification and arrest of three suspects. Savion Thomas, who was 17 at the time, and an unnamed 16-year-old were the first to be taken into custody. Despite his age, Thomas was set to face murder charges as an adult. Subsequently, a third suspect, 20-year-old Dashan King, was arrested and charged with murder, attempted murder, and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. All three were detained at the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center, with the two younger suspects held in the juvenile wing. The arrests brought a measure of progress to the case, though they could not undo the profound loss felt by Ganaway's family, friends, and the wider Columbia community.
