Jamonte Markal Simmons was 18 when he was fatally shot near his home on Rice Shire Road in Ridgeland, South Carolina. Known as Monte, he was a Jasper County High School student who loved animals, volunteered at a local shelter and hoped to become a veterinarian. Family remember him as outgoing and the family prankster.

On Saturday, November 14, 2015, five days after his eighteenth birthday, a dispute over a four-wheeler in a wooded area escalated. Jamonte’s aunt, inside a nearby house with her sister, heard two gunshots and found Jamonte deceased outside. The Jasper County Sheriff’s Office identified 15-year-old Jamarie Shakel Garner as the suspect and charged him with murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime. Garner was held at the South Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice Detention Center and later, while 17, was ordered to be tried as an adult.

Jamonte’s mother, Angel Simmons, accepted his honorary diploma at what would have been his graduation, a public tribute to his memory. Does anyone from Ridgeland recall details from that night or the events leading up to the dispute?