By HEATHER RUPPE
The Round O man who shot his Cottageville girlfriend in the back during a 2019 domestic dispute was found guilty during his trial last week.
William Cornelius Sanders, 60, of Round O, was found guilty of attempted murder by a Colleton County jury on Thursday, December 17th.
Sanders has been sentenced to 20 years in prison.
In addition to being convicted of shooting the woman, Sanders was also found convicted of possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. He received a 5-year sentence that offense, which will be served concurrently.
The woman’s identity is being withheld because she is a crime victim.
“Ten days prior to this incident the defendant told the victim that he was going to bury her,” said Assistant Solicitor Ceth Utsey, who prosecuted the case. “Ten days later, he tried to do just that.”
Sanders was arrested April 15, 2019, and charged with domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature in an incident involving the same victim. In that case, Sanders is accused of pulling a gun on his girlfriend and telling her he would “bury you” after she refused to have sex with him. Ten days later, Colleton County sheriff’s deputies Cottageville Police officers received a report of a shooting on Bodison Memorial Road. They arrived to find Sanders’ former girlfriend lying face down in the front yard with a gunshot wound to her back, according to information provided by the Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor’s Office.
The victim’s mother, who was inside the home at the time of the incident, told officers that Sanders and the victim were outside arguing while she and three of her grandchildren were in the house. They then heard a gunshot in the front yard.
Sanders initially fled the scene, but was apprehended a short time later: he was found at his father’s house, which is about two minutes from the crime scene, according to the solicitor’s office.
“He acknowledged being at the address and talking to his ex-girlfriend. However, he told investigators the woman was the victim of a drive-by shooting and that he fled for fear for his own life,” said Jeff Kidd, administrative chief of staff for the solicitor’s office.
The woman survived the shooting and told authorities Sanders shot her with a shotgun.
The weapon was never recovered.
During Sanders’ three-day trial last week, the solicitor’s office called 14 witnesses to the stand. One of these 14 witnesses was a S.C. State Law Enforcement Division analyst, who testified that gunshot residue was detected on his Sanders’ hands shortly after the shooting.
A Colleton County Sheriff’s Office firearms instructor, noting the tightly grouped holes in the woman’s clothing torn by shotgun pellets, were too closely grouped to have been fired from the roadway, as Sanders claimed.
According to Kidd, Sanders has a long criminal history that includes multiple convictions for assault and battery of a high and aggravated nature.
Though he has been convicted of the attempted murder charge against the victim, his charge of domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature against her from April 15, 2019, is still pending. All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty in a court of law, said Kidd.
