On a summer night in July 2016, a selfless act of courage tragically cut short the life of 29-year-old Jonathan Michael Prins, a male U.S. Army Drill Sergeant stationed at Fort Jackson. The events unfolded outside the Frayed Knot Bar & Grill in Chapin, South Carolina, where Prins and a fellow soldier, Staff Sgt. Charles Allen Judge Jr., witnessed a violent altercation.
Joseph Elijah Mills was reportedly attacking a woman in the parking lot, and without hesitation, Prins and Judge intervened in an attempt to protect her and peacefully resolve the escalating situation.
Their heroic efforts to de-escalate the confrontation were met with deadly violence. As they approached with their hands up, trying to talk to Mills, he opened fire, fatally shooting both soldiers. Prins was pronounced dead at the scene from gunshot wounds to the upper body. The senseless act of violence left a community in shock and mourning the loss of two men who were trying to be good Samaritans. Prins, a husband and father of three small children, was remembered as a hero who died protecting someone he didn't even know.
In the aftermath of the shooting, Joseph Elijah Mills, then 25 years old, fled the scene but was apprehended by law enforcement later the same day. He was subsequently charged with two counts of murder for the deaths of Jonathan Michael Prins and Charles Allen Judge Jr. Following his arrest, Mills was denied bond. In May 2018, he pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to 40 years in prison without the possibility of parole, bringing a measure of justice to the families of the two fallen soldiers whose lives were taken while they were trying to save another.
