On the evening of August 29, 2021, Ricky Bowers, a 49-year-old man from Hartwell, Georgia, went to visit a friend’s home on Woodmont Circle in Anderson, South Carolina. Sometime around 6:25 p.m., a dispute inside or around the house spilled into the backyard, where neighbors later reported the sudden eruption of gunfire. Deputies and emergency medical personnel were dispatched to the address after a report of a shooting, and when they reached the home they found Bowers lying in the yard,
unresponsive. According to the Anderson County Coroner’s Office, he had been shot multiple times and was pronounced dead at the scene, his life ending only a short drive from the city of his birth.
The investigation that unfolded in those first hours moved quickly. Coroner Greg Shore’s office described the killing as a suspected murder almost immediately, noting that Bowers appeared to have been shot approximately eight times in the backyard of his friend’s house. Investigators with the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office focused on a man at the scene, Anderson resident Dustin Tyler Marett, who was detained that night. In the days that followed, an arrest warrant alleged that Marett, “with malice aforethought,” caused Bowers’s death by firing a. 45-caliber automatic handgun at him multiple times. Detectives charged Marett with murder and with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, describing the shooting as stemming from a domestic situation rather than a random encounter.
Public records show that Marett was booked into the Anderson County jail on August 29 and again on August 30, 2021, initially under a temporary custody order and then on the formal murder charge tied to Bowers’s death. The warrant listed no bond for the murder count, underscoring the severity of the accusations. Local reports indicated that, because of the sensitive nature of what deputies called a domestic case, the sheriff’s office released few additional details about the relationship between Bowers and Marett or what exactly triggered the violence that evening. Authorities instead emphasized that the incident was contained to that property and did not pose an ongoing threat to the wider community, while encouraging anyone with information to contact investigators. As of the most readily available public reporting, coverage centers on Marett’s arrest and charges; later court proceedings, including any trial or conviction, are not clearly documented in open news sources.
Away from the crime scene and legal process, friends and family remembered Bowers in far different terms. Obituaries and memorial pages describe him as a Hartwell resident who had made a living with his hands as a self-employed mechanic, someone who knew engines and machinery the way others know books. Born in Anderson, South Carolina, he was the son of Wayne Stevenson “Coot” Bowers and Dixie Bowen Bowers, and he maintained ties to his faith community as a member of Cornerstone Baptist Church. Those who left tributes online lit virtual candles in his memory, shared nicknames like “Slick Rick,” and recalled him as a loyal, “true blue” presence in their lives. For them, the bare facts of gunshots in a backyard on Woodmont Circle are only the final, brutal chapter in a longer story of a man whose everyday routines—work, church, family, and friendships—were abruptly and violently cut short.
