In the early hours of December 29, 2002, a male Myrtle Beach police officer, 28-year-old Joseph John 'Joe' McGarry, was shot and killed in the line of duty. The incident occurred around 12:30 a.m. in the parking lot of a Dunkin' Donuts on North Kings Highway. McGarry, a four-year veteran of the police force and a member of the Street Crimes Unit, was with his partner, Mike Guthinger, when they recognized a man inside the restaurant as a suspect in a homicide that had taken place a month
earlier.
After the suspect, Luzenski Allen Cottrell, exited the Dunkin' Donuts, Officer McGarry engaged him in conversation. Believing Cottrell to be armed, McGarry informed him that he was going to conduct a pat-down. As McGarry attempted to do so, Cottrell turned, walked away, and reached for his waistband. When McGarry tried to stop him, Cottrell pulled out a. 45 caliber handgun and shot the officer in the face. Officer Guthinger returned fire, wounding Cottrell in the leg as he fled the scene with a female companion, 21-year-old Amber Alicia Counts of North Myrtle Beach.
A high-speed chase ensued, which ended when police deployed stop sticks to disable the stolen 1996 Honda Accord that Counts was driving. Cottrell and Counts were both arrested. Cottrell was charged with murder, assault with intent to kill, resisting arrest with a deadly weapon, and grand larceny. Counts was charged with accessory after the fact to murder, failure to stop for police, and grand larceny.
Luzenski Allen Cottrell was subsequently tried for the murder of Officer McGarry. In April 2005, a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death. This conviction, however, was overturned by the South Carolina Supreme Court in January 2008 on the grounds that the jury should have been given the option of a voluntary manslaughter conviction. Cottrell faced a retrial, and in September 2014, a jury once again convicted him of murder and sentenced him to death. In addition to the murder of Officer McGarry, Cottrell was also serving a life sentence for the November 2002 murder of Michael Jonathan Love and was a suspect in the killing of Richard Hartman, which occurred a month before McGarry's death.
