Christopher Lott Jr., a 35-year-old Black man described by loved ones as outgoing and a devoted father, was at a bar in Columbia, South Carolina, when his life was cut short by a sudden act of violence. Friends remembered him as the life of the party, a good man who cherished his children.
In the early morning hours of August 22, 2019, Lott was a customer at McCary's Bar and Grill on Bush River Road.
Around 2:15 a.m., a man who had previously been banned from the establishment, Ernest Condre Bethel, arrived armed with a pistol and tried to get inside. When employees and other patrons managed to get him back outside, Bethel pulled out his weapon and fired a dozen shots through the closed front door into the crowded bar. The entire incident was captured by the bar’s interior and exterior surveillance cameras.
The gunfire struck four people. Christopher Lott Jr. was rushed to a local hospital, where he died from multiple gunshot wounds during surgery. Another man, 29-year-old Tolliver Wise, died at the scene. Two other patrons, Cameron Jenkins and Gregory Martin, were also shot and suffered life-threatening injuries but survived.
The Richland County Sheriff’s Department investigated the shooting and quickly identified Bethel, then 26, as the gunman. A search was launched, and he was ultimately apprehended. Prosecutors charged him with two counts of murder for the deaths of Lott and Wise, two counts of attempted murder for injuring Jenkins and Martin, and one count of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime.
Bethel’s trial began on April 17, 2023. Three days later, on April 20, a Richland County jury returned a guilty verdict on all five charges. That same day, Judge Clifton Newman sentenced Ernest Bethel to a total of 55 years in prison. The sentence consisted of concurrent 50-year terms for the murders, concurrent 30-year terms for the attempted murders, and a consecutive five-year term for the weapons charge. The case was closed with his conviction and sentencing in April 2023.
