On a cold December evening in 2021, traffic along Shady Grove Road, a two-lane route that winds through the woods north of St. George, South Carolina, moved as usual through the early winter darkness. Behind the wheel of his car was Edwin Montez Boyd, a 44-year-old Black man from the small Dorchester County town he had long called home. According to the Dorchester County coroner, Boyd died on December 22, 2021, from gunshot wounds; deputies later described how his car was found on Shady Grove
Road, about six miles north of St. George, riddled with bullet holes on the passenger side. He was pronounced dead at approximately 6:25 p.m., and his body was sent to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston for autopsy as authorities immediately opened a homicide investigation.
Boyd’s killing cut short a life that had already carried him through hard seasons and second chances. Public records show that years earlier he had served time in prison on an armed-robbery conviction, completing a long sentence in state and federal custody before earning release in 2020. By the time of his death, he was back in the Lowcountry, living in Saint George and remembered by friends and family as “Tez” or “Monty,” a man with deep roots in the community who had gone to St. George High School and worked in local industry and trucking to support himself and his loved ones. Online memorials created after his death describe him not as a headline, but as a father, cousin, and friend whose sense of humor and energy made him the “life of the party,” and whose loss left a visible gap at family gatherings and in his old neighborhoods.
In the days immediately after the shooting, investigators with the Dorchester County Sheriff’s Office released few details to the public, only confirming that Boyd had been shot while driving and that his death was being treated as a homicide. Then, about a week later, they announced a major development. On December 30, 2021, deputies arrested 43-year-old John Stanford Johnson of Harleyville in neighboring Orangeburg County. Johnson was taken into custody without incident, transported to the Dorchester County Detention Center, and publicly identified by local media as the man authorities accused of killing Boyd. A bond hearing was scheduled for the following morning, a first formal step in what was expected to become a long court process.
Months later, a second wave of news further detailed Johnson’s status in the case. In August 2022, the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division announced separate charges against him for cashing in four stolen lottery scratch-off tickets at a gas station in Harleyville. In that same report, Johnson was explicitly described as a “Harleyville murder suspect,” and state agents noted that he had already been arrested on December 30, 2021, and charged with the murder of a man near St. George—a clear reference to Boyd’s killing. Court records cited in that coverage stated that Johnson received a $250,000 bond on the murder charge and that he was released on bond on July 28, 2022, under conditions that included electronic monitoring and an order that he have no contact with Boyd’s family.
Publicly available records and news accounts trace the story up to that point—an ambush on a rural road, a victim found shot to death in his car, and a named suspect arrested and charged with murder, then later released on strict bond conditions while also facing unrelated fraud counts. What those sources do not clearly document is any subsequent trial, verdict, or final resolution of the homicide charge tied to Boyd’s death. As far as the reporting goes, Edwin Montez Boyd’s story remains frozen on that December night: a hometown man driving a familiar back road, a sudden burst of gunfire in the dark, and a community left with unanswered questions about why he was targeted and whether full justice for his killing has yet been realized in a courtroom.
