On the night of December 15, 2019, 53-year-old taxi driver Paul Swatsell was shot while on duty after transporting a group of five teenagers from a Waffle House on Broad River Road to the 4300 block of Brookridge Drive in northern Columbia. The shooting occurred shortly before 10 p.m.; paramedics took Swatsell to Prisma Health Richland Hospital, and he was pronounced dead at 10:40 p.m. An autopsy confirmed the gunshot wound as the cause of death.

The Columbia Police Department and the Richland County Coroner’s Office investigated, using community tips and video surveillance to reconstruct the events. About two weeks later, authorities charged two 14-year-old boys with murder, armed robbery, and conspiracy; the other three juveniles who had been in the cab that night were not charged. Swatsell was a West Columbia resident and remembered by classmates from Brookland-Cayce High School as kind and compassionate.