Jaheil Dyiir Thompson, a 23-year-old Black man from Newberry, South Carolina, was known to those closest to him as “JD,” a son, friend, and relative whose life was rooted in family ties and quiet acts of generosity. He was born to Euneatha Williams and the late Yusef Thompson, and loved ones later described him as someone who gave freely of himself and inspired many people around him, the kind of young man others turned to for support and encouragement.
In the days after his death, online memorials and a fundraiser for his burial painted a picture of a caring, loyal presence whose loss left an abrupt and painful emptiness in his community.
In the early hours of Friday, June 13, 2025, Thompson traveled to an apartment complex along Glenwood Street in Belton, South Carolina, identified in some reports as the Belton Garden Apartments. Around 3:00 to 3:40 a.m., deputies from the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office responded to a shots-fired call at the complex. Inside one of the units, what had begun as a heated confrontation escalated into a violent encounter. When first responders arrived, they found Thompson inside the apartment, suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Paramedics and deputies attempted lifesaving measures, including CPR, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The Anderson County Coroner’s Office later confirmed the cause of death as gunshot wounds to the chest and ruled the case a homicide.
Investigators quickly focused on what they described as a domestic altercation between Thompson and another individual inside the apartment. Officials emphasized that Thompson did not live at the complex; he had gone there and, at some point, an argument in the confined space turned into a deadly exchange. A woman was also present in the apartment at the time, though her identity and role have not been made public, and authorities have not detailed the precise nature of the relationships among the three people in the unit. Law enforcement agencies stressed that the evidence pointed to an isolated incident rather than a random attack, and that there was no broader threat to the surrounding neighborhood. An autopsy was conducted as part of the coroner and sheriff’s joint homicide investigation, as detectives worked to reconstruct exactly how the confrontation spiraled into fatal violence.
By later that same day, the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office had announced an arrest. Detectives interviewed 23-year-old Damaruis Lamont Morton, who had been at the apartment during the shooting, and their investigation led them to identify him as the suspected shooter. Morton was taken into custody and booked into the Anderson County Detention Center. He was charged with manslaughter—specifically voluntary manslaughter under South Carolina law—and with possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Booking records list him as a male defendant held on manslaughter and weapons charges, as well as on a hold for another agency, reflecting outstanding, unrelated charges in Greenville County that authorities noted in early reports. Morton’s initial appearance before a judge followed soon after his arrest, and subsequent roster and booking entries continue to show the manslaughter and weapons counts tied to the events on Glenwood Street.
As the legal process moved forward, the case entered the slower rhythm of pretrial proceedings, with the formal charges recorded but no public record yet of a trial or conviction connected to Thompson’s death. For Thompson’s family and friends, the pace of the courts stood in stark contrast to the suddenness of their loss. Obituaries from Newberry memorialized him as “JD,” emphasizing his warmth, the depth of his family connections, and the spiritual language of “eternal rest,” while an online fundraiser sought help to give him a proper burial and spoke of the shock of losing someone so young and so central to the lives around him. In Belton and Newberry alike, his name joined the growing list of lives ended by gunfire, and the story of that June night became not just a police file but a reminder of a young man whose future was cut short in a small apartment in the dark hours before dawn.
