Four Teens Charged With Murder in Pomaria Shooting That Killed Newberry 19-Year-Old

Posted Monday, November 2, 2026 8:45 am

David Hucks (via MyrtleBeachSC)

Nov 2, 2026 · @ https://x.com/myrtlebeachnews

A 19-year-old Newberry man is dead, a second person was flown to a trauma center, and four teenagers from three small Newberry County communities now face murder charges after gunfire broke out in Pomaria Shooting late Friday night, Oct. 30.

The Newberry County Sheriff’s Office identified the man killed as Tyler L. Austin, and deputies had all four suspects in custody by Saturday. Three are 18. The fourth is 17. None has been convicted, and every one of them is presumed innocent until the state proves otherwise in court.

For people along the Grand Strand, Pomaria Shooting may feel a long way off. It sits a little over three hours up the road, off I-26 between Columbia and Newberry. But the questions this case raises are statewide ones: how a 17-year-old charged with murder moves through South Carolina’s courts, why one suspect was already out on bond when the shooting happened, and what it means when a rural county keeps burying its young people. This report pulls together what four news outlets, court records and state law tell us so far.

Details of the Pomaria Shooting

What happened Friday night

The first calls came in around 11 p.m. Dispatchers got reports of gunfire near Holloway Street and Folk Street in Pomaria, according to the sheriff’s office [WIS, 2026]. Shortly after, a second set of calls reported that a car had been hit by bullets a short distance away, on nearby Peak Road [Cedar News, 2026].

Deputies and first responders found two people who had been shot. Austin died. The other victim was airlifted to a trauma center, and as of this weekend authorities had not released that person’s name, age, sex or condition.

Newberry County Coroner Laura Kneece confirmed Austin’s identity and said an autopsy would be performed early this week [Yahoo News, 2026]. In a joint statement, Kneece and Sheriff Lee Foster thanked the first responders who tried to save lives at the scene and called the shooting a senseless act of violence [WIS, 2026].

What officials have not said matters just as much. The sheriff’s office has released no motive. It has not said whether the suspects and victims knew one another, where the four were arrested, or which of them is accused of firing. Those gaps are normal in the first 72 hours of a homicide case. They are also the questions a judge will want answered when bond is argued.

Who is charged, and why the 17-year-old matters

The sheriff’s office charged four people with murder:

Dakerian Lytrell Greenwood, 18, of Pomaria
Jayden Gallman, 18, of Prosperity
Montieth Brown, 18, of Prosperity
A 17-year-old from Newberry

All four were being held at the Newberry County Detention Center with no bond as of Saturday [WIS, 2026]. In South Carolina, a magistrate cannot set bond on a murder charge; that falls to a circuit court judge, which the sheriff’s office confirmed.

The 17-year-old is where local readers should slow down. South Carolina raised the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 17 to 18 in July 2019, sending most 17-year-olds to family court [Live 5 News, 2019]. But the law carves out an exception. A 17-year-old charged with the most serious felonies, those carrying 15 years or more, is excluded from the definition of a child and is treated as an adult from the start [USC Children’s Law Center, 2023]. Murder qualifies.

That explains a split in coverage. The sheriff’s office released the teen’s full name, and several Midlands stations published it. News19 chose to withhold it because he is a minor and said it had asked whether he would be charged as an adult [News19, 2026]. This outlet is not naming him at this stage. The law also lets a solicitor send such a case back to family court, so his status could still change.

A suspect already out on bond

The most pointed fact in the case comes from court records, not a press release. When Austin was killed, Gallman was free on a $5,000 personal recognizance bond from an Oct. 15 drug arrest, according to Newberry County court records [Yahoo News, 2026]. That arrest came just 15 days before the shooting.

A personal recognizance bond means no money changes hands; a defendant promises to come back to court. The record does not show what the drug charge involved, and the arrest is only an allegation.

Two weeks, two shootings, one county

Friday’s killing did not happen in a vacuum. Thirteen days earlier, in the early hours of Oct. 17, gunfire tore through a block party on Wise Street near Holloway Street in the city of Newberry, wounding four people [Newberry Observer, 2026]. Newberry police later charged three people from neighboring Saluda County, two 19-year-olds and a 17-year-old, with offenses including assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature and firing into homes and vehicles [ABC Columbia, 2026].

Police Chief Kevin Goodman said the three had come into the community and contributed to a senseless act of violence, and investigators said more arrests were likely [ABC Columbia, 2026].

Older residents will hear an echo. In May 2022, four teenagers ages 15 to 19 were shot to death in Newberry in less than 24 hours, at two scenes about a block apart [NBC News, 2022]. One of the teens questioned after the first killing died in the second shooting [iHeart/BIN News, 2022]. Months later, police charged three people, including two 17-year-olds, in the first of those deaths [WIS, 2022].

The thread connecting all three cases is the same: young suspects, young victims, and guns in the hands of teenagers. After the 2022 killings, Goodman said investigators were trying to learn where teenagers were getting the guns [Fox Carolina, 2022]. Four years and two more shootings later, that question still has no public answer.

Analysis: the bond question South Carolina already tried to answer

Gallman’s release on a no-money bond two weeks before a homicide is exactly the scenario state lawmakers had in mind when they rewrote South Carolina’s bond rules in 2023.

That law, signed by Gov. Henry McMaster, lets courts revoke bond automatically for people charged with a new crime while out on bond for a violent offense or a gun felony. It also created a new charge, carrying up to five years, for committing a violent crime while out on bond for another violent crime [Post and Courier, 2024]. A provision that drew little debate went further: anyone accused of a violent crime while on bond for any offense, violent or not, must post the full bond in cash rather than the usual 10 percent through a bondsman [Post and Courier, 2023].

Murder is a violent crime under state law, and Gallman’s earlier charge was a drug case. If a circuit judge grants him bond at all, the full-cash rule could apply. That is a real barrier for an 18-year-old. Fifteenth Circuit Solicitor Jimmy Richardson told WMBF this spring that the reform makes it far harder for repeat offenders to get out, and that bond for a second violent charge now goes to General Sessions court, which takes time.

Here is the limit of that law, and it is worth stating plainly. Bond reform works after the second arrest. It does nothing to the decision made at the first one. Nothing in the 2023 changes would have stopped a magistrate from releasing an 18-year-old on a personal recognizance bond for a drug charge on Oct. 15. Critics of reform have also noted how rare these cases are: in Charleston County, fewer than 1 percent of 2023 arrests involved a violent crime by someone already out on bail [Post and Courier, 2024].

For Grand Strand readers, the takeaway cuts both ways. Repeat-offender stories drive bond debates in Columbia, and Horry County lawmakers like Sen. Greg Hembree helped lead the last round [Charleston City Paper, 2023]. Expect this case to be cited. But a single tragic sequence is not data, and nobody should treat Gallman’s earlier arrest as proof of anything about Friday night. He has not been convicted of either charge.

What’s next

Several steps are coming in the days and weeks ahead:

The autopsy. The coroner expected to perform Austin’s autopsy early this week [WIS, 2026]. Its findings will help establish how many shots were fired and from where.
Bond hearings. A circuit court judge must decide whether any of the four can be released [WACH, 2026]. For Gallman, the 2023 bond law could raise the bar.
The 17-year-old’s venue. Under state law his murder charge starts in adult court, but the Eighth Circuit Solicitor’s Office, which prosecutes Newberry County cases, could seek to return it to family court [USC Children’s Law Center, 2023; WIS, 2020].
Unanswered questions. The sheriff’s office says the investigation is ongoing [Cedar News, 2026]. Still unreleased: a motive, the wounded victim’s identity and condition, and whether more people are involved.

Anyone with information can contact the Newberry County Sheriff’s Office or Midlands Crime Stoppers at 1-888-CRIME-SC [Newberry Observer, 2022]. We will update this story as court dates are set.