Eric Jermaine Johnson, a 53-year-old Black man from Union, South Carolina, had lived most of his life in the small textile town where he was born on August 5, 1971, the son of George Edward Johnson Jr. and Ruby Lee Williams Johnson. He grew up in the Union County schools and graduated from Union High School in 1990 before serving his country in the United States Army, where he earned service ribbons and commendations that friends and family later pointed to with pride during his funeral.
In obituaries and memorials, relatives described a man closely tied to his family, remembered by siblings Tony Johnson, Juanita Broadus, Tammy Johnson, and Mona Smith, and by a special friend, Rosetta Thompson, along with a wide circle of nieces, nephews, cousins, and friends who knew him simply as someone who would show up when they needed help.
On a warm Friday evening in mid-July 2025, Union police were called to West Henrietta Street around 7:30 p.m. after reports of gunfire cut through the ordinary sounds of the neighborhood. Officers following those reports discovered a man lying in an open field behind South Pinckney Street, roughly a block away from where the gunshot had been reported. He had been shot at least once and had apparently been down for some time before anyone realized what had happened. Emergency medical crews rushed him from the field to Spartanburg Medical Center, where doctors tried to stabilize his injuries.
Despite those efforts, the man found in the field died later that night. By the following day, the Union County Coroner’s Office publicly identified him as Eric Johnson, confirming that he had succumbed to a gunshot wound after being transported from the scene. His name quickly moved from terse police and coroner statements into more personal remembrances in funeral notices, which noted that he “entered eternal rest” on July 18, 2025, at Spartanburg Medical Center and set services for July 25 at Community Mortuary Chapel, with burial at Rosemont Cemetery in Union. In printed programs celebrating his life, his family chose a photograph of him in military uniform and a subtitle calling him “The Maintenance Man,” a nod both to his work and to the quiet steadiness they felt he brought into their lives.
While the family was making arrangements, investigators were trying to reconstruct the moments that led to the shooting. Union police secured the area around West Henrietta Street and the field behind South Pinckney, combing for shell casings, cameras, and witnesses who might have seen or heard anything that could explain why Eric had been shot. Detectives reviewed surveillance video from nearby properties and interviewed people who had been in the neighborhood that evening. According to police accounts reported in local media, that combination of video and witness statements led them to a name: 34-year-old Charles Mark Young.
Once Young was identified, the case moved rapidly from a mystery shooting to an active manhunt. The Union Police Department obtained signed arrest warrants charging him with murder and with possession of a weapon during a violent crime, formally accusing him of responsibility for the fatal shooting. At the same time, authorities warned the public that he should be considered armed and dangerous. News reports described him as about six feet tall and roughly 192 pounds, and residents were urged not to approach him but to call 911 immediately if they saw him. Photos were circulated to broaden the search, and police indicated that a reward might be offered for information leading to his capture as they coordinated with state and possibly federal partners to follow leads in and beyond Union.
Weeks later, as mourners gathered at Community Mortuary Chapel on Meansville Road to say goodbye, the story of Eric’s final evening remained intertwined with the search for the man accused of killing him. The funeral program and online memorials focused on his life rather than his death: his roots in Union, his service in the Army, his role as a brother and uncle, and the friendships he had built over five decades in the town. Public reporting available through late 2025, however, still described Charles Mark Young as a suspect at large, wanted on murder and weapons charges and considered dangerous, with no widely documented arrest, trial, or conviction in the case. That unresolved search now hangs over the memory of the quiet field where Eric was found, leaving his family and community not only grieving his loss but waiting for the day when someone is finally brought into court to answer for it.
