Abel Arroyo Yanez was a 21-year-old Hispanic male from the Una area of Spartanburg County, South Carolina, who had come to the Upstate to work and send money home to support his widowed mother and 7-year-old sister in Mexico after his father’s death two years earlier. He was described by family as humble, kind, and generous, a hardworking young man who quietly shouldered adult responsibilities long before his time, determined to give his family a more stable life even while living far from
them.
On the late-summer Thursday morning of September 5, 2024, traffic moved steadily along West Blackstock Road, a busy commercial corridor near Westgate Mall in Spartanburg County. Just before 12:30 p.m., sheriff’s deputies were called to the 100 block of the road for a report of gunfire. When they arrived, they found Abel gravely wounded from a gunshot to his chest. He was rushed to a local hospital, where doctors placed him in critical condition, and news of the shooting began to ripple through the community even before anyone outside law enforcement knew his name.
For three days he fought for his life in intensive care. Family members later explained that he had been “tragically wounded” on the morning of September 5 and remained in critical condition until Sunday, September 8, when he succumbed to his injuries. The county coroner confirmed that he died that Sunday but delayed publicly releasing his identity until his mother, still living abroad, could be personally notified that her son had died on the other side of the border. In the days that followed, relatives organized an online fundraiser to help transport his body home for burial, writing about his quiet generosity, his habit of helping others without hesitation, and the crushing devastation his death brought to the family that had depended on him.
While Abel lay in the hospital, investigators from the Spartanburg County Sheriff’s Office worked to piece together what had happened on West Blackstock Road. Witnesses at the scene pointed them toward a 25-year-old Spartanburg County man, Cristobal Avila, who was found not far from where the shooting occurred. He, too, had injuries, though deputies described them as non-life-threatening. He was taken to a hospital for treatment and then transferred to the Spartanburg County Detention Center, where he was booked in connection with the case.
Early jail records from September 6, 2024, show Avila being booked on charges that included attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. After Abel’s death was confirmed, local news reported that those charges were upgraded, and Avila was formally charged with murder in connection with the shooting on West Blackstock Road, with additional counts tied to the alleged use of a weapon during the attack. Public booking information listed bonds of 0.00 on each of the major charges, indicating that he remained in custody at the county detention center while the case moved into the court system.
Authorities have not publicly released a detailed account of what led up to the confrontation that ended in gunfire, and early statements from investigators noted that they were still gathering information and interviewing witnesses even after the victim’s name became known. Months after the shooting, publicly accessible reports continued to describe the charges and the initial arrest but did not yet document a completed trial or verdict, leaving the final legal resolution of the case unknown in the record. What is clear from those records is that a young man who had crossed borders to support his family lost his life to gunfire on a busy Spartanburg roadway, and another young man now faces the profound weight of a murder charge, his guilt or innocence to be decided in a courtroom rather than on the street.
