Billy Jenkins was a 20-year-old man from North Charleston, South Carolina, whose life ended violently on the afternoon of June 24, 2020. That Wednesday, he was visiting a home in the small town of Lincolnville, in the 800 block of Lincoln Avenue, when a family argument spiraled into a deadly confrontation. Inside the house, a father and son had gotten into a heated dispute that turned physical.
Friends and relatives later described Billy as someone who stepped in when people needed help, and that day he tried to calm things down rather than walk away.
According to investigators and eyewitness accounts reported at the time, the argument was between 41-year-old Dontreia Antwon Durant and his son. Voices were raised and tensions climbed until the conflict moved beyond words. Billy, seeing how quickly the situation was deteriorating, tried to act as a peacemaker, positioning himself between the two and attempting to defuse the fight. Instead of cooling off, Durant left the immediate area, went to get a gun, and then returned toward the home. Sensing the danger to the people inside, Billy moved to block the doorway, trying to keep the man from getting back in and harming his friend and his friend’s mother.
It was in that doorway, according to the family’s account and law-enforcement reports, that the shooting happened. Durant fired multiple times, striking Billy, who collapsed with serious gunshot wounds. Deputies from the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office were called just before 5 p.m. and arrived to find him gravely injured. He was rushed to Trident Medical Center, but the damage was too severe; the Charleston County Coroner’s Office later confirmed that he died at the hospital from a gunshot wound. News of his death traveled quickly through the communities of North Charleston, Summerville, and Hollywood, where friends and relatives knew him by the nickname “BJ” and struggled to grasp how a young man could lose his life simply for trying to shield others from harm.
In the days that followed, authorities moved quickly to identify and arrest a suspect. Investigators with the Sheriff’s Office and forensic teams processed the scene and, based on witness statements and evidence, named Dontreia Antwon Durant as the shooter. He was arrested and charged with murder and with possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, and was booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center. Reports noted that he waived his right to appear at an initial bond hearing, leaving him in custody as the case moved into the court system.
While the criminal charges worked their way through the courts, Billy’s family focused on honoring his memory and seeking what they saw as justice for his death. An obituary announced a graveside service at Greater St. Luke AME Church Cemetery in Hollywood, South Carolina, with a public viewing in North Charleston, and listed the parents, siblings, and extended family left behind. Online memorials and a fundraiser described a young man whose life had been “senselessly taken” and who “died a hero,” emphasizing that he was trying to protect a friend and a mother from violence when he was shot. Those close to him wrote about the depth of their grief and their determination that the man responsible should remain behind bars.
In the years after the shooting, the case continued in Charleston County’s General Sessions court. Court dockets later showed that the initial murder charge against Durant was resolved not by a trial verdict, but by a guilty plea. In July 2024, more than four years after Billy’s death, Durant pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter, along with a companion charge of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. The docket notes the plea date but does not detail the exact sentence in that record, only confirming that the state and the defendant reached a resolution that formally acknowledged his responsibility for the killing on Lincoln Avenue. For Billy’s family, the legal outcome came long after the day everything changed, but it marked an official recognition in court of what they had said from the beginning: that he was killed while trying to protect others from harm.
