On the evening of July 6, 2014, Miquel Garnell Shine II, a 22-year-old man from North Charleston, South Carolina, crossed paths for the last time with people he knew. Earlier, there had been simmering tension over something small and petty: a pair of sunglasses that 26-year-old Latoya Latrice Carson believed had been stolen. According to court documents later summarized in local news reports, Carson called Miquel about the glasses, and during the call he allegedly told her he would slap her,
turning a minor dispute into a heated personal confrontation.
Carson was not alone for long. Investigators later said that she was picked up in a gold Lincoln driven by Jason Fulmore, and together they went looking for Miquel along Alton Street near Rivers Avenue, a busy corridor in North Charleston. Witnesses would later tell police that when they found him, Carson and Miquel argued in the street, the earlier phone call now spilling out into public view. A short time later, a car pulled up and shots rang out. Officers responding shortly before 7 p.m. found Miquel lying mortally wounded; the coroner would rule his death a homicide caused by gunfire.
Police pieced the story together quickly from witness accounts and physical evidence. By the next afternoon, North Charleston officers had located both Carson and Fulmore and arrested them. They were each charged with murder in connection with Miquel’s killing, with investigators alleging that after the argument on Alton Street, Fulmore fired a shot into Miquel’s face before the pair fled in the Lincoln. At a bond hearing, Carson admitted to getting into an altercation with him but denied that she or Fulmore had pulled the trigger, insisting that killing someone over sunglasses would be “petty.” Fulmore’s family stood behind him in court, describing him as a devoted father and claiming that a tape existed which would prove his innocence.
The shooting that claimed Miquel’s life was not an isolated act of violence that weekend. Local reporters noted that his death was the third shooting in North Charleston over the holiday period, a grim backdrop that underscored how quickly disputes could escalate into deadly encounters. Yet, in the swirl of crime reports and brief news items, details about what became of the case after those initial arrests are largely absent from the public record. Available reporting focuses on the homicide, the swift identification of Carson and Fulmore as suspects, and the murder charges filed against them, but does not clearly document the final disposition of those charges or the outcome of any subsequent trials.
For Miquel’s family, friends, and neighbors, the case was never just another line in a crime blotter. Obituaries and funeral notices describe him as the son of Ruby Lee and Mike Garnell Shine, and the grandson of Pearl McCoy and Wilhelmina Shine, surrounded by siblings, cousins, and a wider circle of relatives and friends in North Charleston. In online memorials, people addressed him by his nickname “Happy,” remembering his smile, his tight hugs, and the warmth he brought into their lives. They wrote of shock and heartbreak, of a young man whose life ended on a summer evening over a senseless argument, and of a family left to navigate their grief while the justice system moved on at its own opaque pace.
