PRESS RELEASE. A 22-year-old Walterboro man who shot and killed two men and then drove with their dead bodies inside a car is headed to prison.
Jonathan Shamar Moore of Walterboro pleaded guilty Monday of two counts of murder in the 2018 shooting deaths of 28-year-old Alexander Blakeney and 23-year-old Brandon D. Ferguson. Moore also pleaded guilty to possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Moore’s jury trial had been scheduled to begin Monday afternoon.
Moore was sentenced to serve 30 years in prison. He received five years for the gun charge. All charges are to be served concurrently.
The case was prosecuted by Assistant Solicitor Tameaka A. Legette, a member of the Solicitor’s Office Career Criminal Unit, which prosecutes the circuit’s more violent and habitual offenders.
The Career Criminal Unit has earned convictions against 410 of the 429 defendants it has prosecuted since its inception in 2009.
The families of Blakeney and Ferguson each reported them missing after no one had heard from the men for a few days and Ferguson failed to return his rental car.
On Jan. 27, 2018, around 4:40 p.m., a church surveillance camera on Doctors Creek Road captures Ferguson’s rental car passing by Ferguson is seen driving, while Blakeney is the front seat passenger. A third person is seen in the backseat. About 20 minutes later, the same vehicle drives by in the opposite direction with a different driver.
It wasn’t until about a week later that Colleton County sheriff’s deputies found Blakeney and Ferguson’s bodies shot to death in the partially burned rental car in a wooded area outside Walterboro. The men’s bodies were found with the assistance of a witness who reported seeing Moore sitting on a body that he later put into the trunk of the vehicle they were found in.
Moore’s prior record includes a possession of methamphetamine in 2017.
Circuit Court Judge Carmen Mullen handed down Monday’s sentence.
