On the late evening of August 31, 2021, deputies found 62-year-old Richard Dennis Keese lying in the roadway on Padgett Street in the Utica Mill Hill area near Seneca, South Carolina, with a gunshot wound. Despite life-saving efforts by deputies, a Seneca Police Department officer, and paramedics, Keese died at the scene. Keese was a Pendleton resident known to friends as Bulldog.

The Oconee County Sheriff’s Office identified two Pendleton men, 27-year-old Braxton Earl and 20-year-old Stanley Eugene Earl Jr., as suspects in the shooting. Braxton Earl was arrested and charged with murder; Stanley Eugene Earl Jr. was also taken into custody and charged with murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Both were booked into the Oconee County Detention Center and initially denied bond. Investigators said the confrontation was tied to ill feelings related to another death in Anderson County.

Anyone with information about Richard Keese’s killing or who was in the Padgett Street area that night is asked to come forward.