On an April evening in 2015, the life of 20-year-old Matthew Horne was cut short on a basketball court in Beaufort, South Carolina. The young man was found deceased at approximately 9:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 30, 2015, near the Charles Lind Brown Activity Center on Greene Street, having sustained multiple gunshot wounds. This tragic event marked the second fatal shooting at that same recreational area in a span of just three months.
In the days leading up to his death, there had been
an altercation involving Horne and another young man, Richard Snowten, which escalated to include 17-year-old Malik Shakur Stanfield. This dispute appears to have been the catalyst for the fatal encounter. On the night of the shooting, Horne arrived at the basketball court and, according to witnesses, exchanged a handshake with Stanfield. As Horne sat on the bleachers, Stanfield began to pace before opening fire. An autopsy would later confirm that Horne was shot multiple times in the chest, abdomen, and legs, with many of the bullets striking him in the back.
The investigation into Horne's murder quickly pointed to Malik Stanfield as the primary suspect. Investigators discovered Facebook messages from the day before the shooting in which Stanfield had explicitly stated his intention to kill Horne. Stanfield initially provided an inconsistent alibi and attempted to implicate Snowten. Two days into his murder trial in January 2017, then 19-year-old Stanfield pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of voluntary manslaughter and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He was subsequently sentenced to 20 years in prison by Circuit Court Judge Carmen Mullen, receiving credit for the time he had already served since his arrest.
According to his family, in the weeks before his death, Matthew Horne had been grappling with past mistakes and was actively seeking to turn his life around. He had engaged with at-risk mentors and had recently begun attending mental health counseling sessions with the goal of making better choices for his future. His parents described him as their 'sunshine.'
