Tobias Ezra Williams, a 22-year-old Black/African American man from Eastover, South Carolina, was killed on the night of May 1, 2024, after gunfire brought Richland County sheriff’s deputies to the 100 block of Cottage Court in the Lower Richland area. Deputies were dispatched to the location at approximately 9 p.m. and found Williams outside near a driveway suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the head.
Deputies immediately began providing aid while waiting for emergency medical personnel. EMS personnel continued efforts to help him after arriving, but Williams died from his injuries. The Richland County Coroner’s Office subsequently identified him as the person killed in the shooting.
In the first hours of the investigation, authorities released few details about what had led to the gunfire. Investigators did say they believed a dark-colored sedan was connected to the shooting, suggesting that a vehicle may have played a role in the events surrounding Williams’s death. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department continued gathering evidence and investigating the circumstances while asking anyone with information to come forward. Public reports did not establish a motive or describe a dispute, confrontation, or other specific sequence of events preceding the fatal shot.
The investigation quickly resulted in two arrests. Jaheim Clary, who was 19 at the time, was taken into custody on May 1, the same day Williams was killed. Zayquwan Taylor, who was 20, was arrested the following day, May 2. The Richland County Sheriff’s Department later publicly announced that both men had been charged in connection with Williams’s death.
Clary and Taylor were each charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. Both were booked into the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Richland County. Contemporary reports announcing the arrests did not provide a detailed account of which man investigators believed fired the fatal shot, what individual actions authorities attributed to each defendant, or what evidence allegedly connected them to the killing. The reports also did not publicly establish a motive for the shooting.
Court scheduling records indicate that the criminal case continued beyond the initial arrests. Taylor appeared on a Richland County Fifth Judicial Circuit first-appearance docket in May 2024, and Clary’s name later appeared on a 2025 second-appearance docket, indicating that at least part of the prosecution remained active well after the shooting. However, publicly available news coverage located for the case does not report that either defendant has been convicted, acquitted, or sentenced in Williams’s killing. No reliably sourced public report located described a completed murder trial or final disposition for either defendant, so the murder and weapons allegations against Clary and Taylor should be regarded as charges rather than proven findings of guilt.
Williams’s death was followed within days by funeral arrangements for his family and community. A public visitation was held on May 7, 2024, at JP Holley Funeral Home’s Southeast Chapel, followed by a Celebration of Life service on May 8 at Red Hill Baptist Church in Gadsden. As the community mourned him, the criminal investigation had already shifted from an initially sparse account of a nighttime shooting and a possible dark-colored sedan to a case involving two young defendants facing murder and violent-crime weapons charges.
