Cameron Conner, a 13-year-old White boy, died on January 21, 2024, after a shooting during a hunting outing in Orangeburg County near Santee, South Carolina. Late that Sunday afternoon, on private land near a residence on Bonner Avenue, what began as a routine hunt between two youths ended in a single, devastating mistake—one friend firing a gun and the other not making it home.
Early accounts from officials described the incident as a hunting accident and said the boys had been hunting on private property when one shot the other. Different reports described the hunt in different ways—some saying it was squirrel hunting, others calling it bird hunting, and a family account describing it as duck hunting—underscoring how the first details of a sudden tragedy can arrive in fragments. What remained consistent, however, was the core outline: two friends, a firearm, and a fatal shot that authorities said appeared accidental.
Investigators with the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources took the case, as it fell within the agency’s scope over hunting incidents, and they indicated the inquiry was ongoing while they worked to piece together how the shooting happened. Public reports noted that fuller circumstances—how the firearm was handled, where each teen was positioned, and what occurred in the moments immediately before and after the shot—were not released in detail.
In the days that followed, the loss was carried not only by investigators and officials but by a family trying to describe someone who was suddenly gone. Coverage and family remembrances portrayed him as a student-athlete at Dorchester Academy whose life revolved around the outdoors and the teams he played for, and whose absence hit with the particular shock that comes when a normal afternoon becomes a permanent dividing line.
No public reports from the investigating agency or the outlets covering the incident described an arrest, named a suspect, or announced criminal charges related to the shooting, and the friend involved was not publicly identified in the coverage. The case was repeatedly characterized as an accident under investigation, with some reporting that autopsy and toxicology results were pending at the time those stories were published.
