Tyrell Javon Scarborough was a 21-year-old Black man from Sumter, South Carolina, whose life had been built around family, work, and music. He grew up in Sumter, the son of Dennis and Christine Scarborough, and attended the local public schools, staying close to the community that had shaped him. As a young adult he found steady work with Pilgrim’s Pride, balancing the demands of his job with time spent alongside his brothers and sisters, extended family, and friends.
Those who wrote about him after his death described a loving and devoted son and brother who drew inspiration from music and carried that love into his everyday life, a quiet thread running through his short adulthood.
On the night of Tuesday, February 22, 2022, Tyrell went to the Circle K convenience store at the busy intersection of Broad Street and Alice Drive in Sumter. It was around 9:45 p.m., the kind of hour when the gas station parking lot is lit by harsh canopy lights and the flow of traffic along Broad Street begins to thin. According to police, he was there to meet a man who had been given a ride to the store, and an argument broke out in the parking lot. In a matter of moments, the confrontation escalated into gunfire. When officers from the Sumter Police Department responded to reports of shots fired, they found two people down: Tyrell lying mortally wounded on the pavement and a 20-year-old woman suffering from gunshot injuries nearby. Despite efforts at the scene, Tyrell was pronounced dead where he fell, while the woman was rushed to a local hospital and was expected to survive.
The chaos of those few seconds spread beyond the immediate argument. Investigators later explained that another adult at the gas station, accompanied by a young child, was also fired upon but was not physically injured. Witnesses saw the gunman flee on foot, disappearing behind a nearby business and leaving behind a scene of shell casings, shattered calm, and traumatized bystanders. In the hours that followed, officers secured the area, collected evidence, and began piecing together what had happened in the glare of the convenience store lights. The case quickly became a priority for local authorities, not only because a young man had been killed, but because children and uninvolved bystanders had been put in the line of fire.
By the next day, the Sumter Police Department had publicly identified a suspect: 23-year-old Justice Dymel Peoples of Porter Street. Police described him as armed and dangerous and said he was wanted on murder and attempted murder charges in connection with the shooting that killed Tyrell and wounded the young woman at the Circle K. News outlets carried his name and photograph as officers urged the public to come forward with information, and Crime Stoppers offered a reward for tips that could lead to his capture. For several weeks, the case hung in the balance as authorities searched for him, the wanted bulletins a constant reminder to the community of what had happened in that gas station parking lot.
On March 16, 2022, nearly a month after the shooting, the tension broke when Peoples turned himself in to authorities without incident. Police announced that he was being held at the Sumter County detention center, and shortly afterward booking and arrest records reflected a series of serious charges tied to the Circle K attack: murder in Tyrell’s death, multiple counts of assault or attempted murder related to the wounded woman and the additional victim who had been shot at, as well as weapons offenses, including unlawful carrying of a pistol and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. The Sumter Police Department’s 2022 annual report later listed the case among its significant arrests for the year, noting that Peoples had been charged in the murder of Tyrell Scarborough in the Circle K parking lot on Broad Street.
Publicly available records and news accounts focus on the night of the shooting, the manhunt that followed, and the eventual arrest and charging of the suspect, but they offer little about what has happened since in the court system. There is no widely reported account of a completed trial or sentencing for the accused gunman, leaving the legal resolution of the case unclear in the public record. What remains sharply defined is the outline of Tyrell’s life and its abrupt ending: a young worker and music lover rooted in Sumter, a brief, volatile encounter in a Circle K parking lot, and a family left to grieve amid ongoing questions about justice and accountability for the violence that took him away.
