In the quiet hours of Saturday, April 9, 2016, Gail Davis, a 59-year-old woman, was found fatally shot inside a home on Grassy Court near Marion, South Carolina. Deputies and investigators from the Marion County Sheriff’s Office responded to 1401 Grassy Court after reports of an early-morning shooting, and when they arrived they discovered Davis suffering from a gunshot wound to the chest.
Marion County Coroner James Lee identified her at the scene, and authorities prepared for an autopsy to be performed at the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston.
Almost immediately, the account given by the man in the home began to shift. Investigators said Todd White, described as Davis’s common-law husband, first told officers he had stepped into the restroom and heard a gunshot, then emerged to see a man running from the house. White claimed he chased the fleeing figure, a story that prompted deputies to deploy bloodhounds in an attempt to pick up a track. The dogs came up empty, and as interviews continued, investigators said White ultimately admitted responsibility and led officers to the firearm, telling them he had thrown it over a fence. Even then, deputies reported another turn in his explanation—White began describing the shooting as an accident.
White was arrested later that same morning, and authorities charged him with murder and with using a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. The sheriff’s office also noted he had a lengthy history of criminal domestic violence and had previously served time in prison. An arraignment was scheduled for Monday, April 11, 2016, as the case moved from a chaotic scene on Grassy Court into the slower machinery of courtrooms and custody.
In the years that followed, the case was publicly framed as another fatal episode of domestic violence in South Carolina. In a statewide accounting of 2016 domestic-violence deaths, the South Carolina Attorney General’s office described Davis as having been shot by her live-in boyfriend, Todd White, and reported that he was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter and sentenced to 17 years in prison.
