John Thomas III, a 24-year-old Black man from Columbia, Georgia, died after a violent encounter in North Charleston, South Carolina, in the winter of 2024. On the evening of January 27 officers responded to the 2800 block of Otranto Road for a reported single-vehicle crash. They found a car that had struck a fence and a tree, with live power lines fallen on it, and the driver, John Thomas III, bleeding from a gunshot wound to his hip. He was transported to Trident Medical Center but died at 1:47 a.m. on January 28; the Charleston County Coroner’s Office ruled the death a homicide.

The North Charleston Police Department identified a suspect within 48 hours. On January 29 officers located and arrested 35-year-old James Palmer Jr. near Fairwind Drive in North Charleston; he was charged with murder and possession of a deadly weapon during the commission of a violent crime and booked into the Al Cannon Detention Center. At the time of the shooting Palmer was reportedly free on bond from an August 2021 arrest for domestic violence of a high and aggravated nature and two counts of assaulting a police officer.

What information can anyone share about the evening of January 27 around Otranto Road or about witnesses who might have seen Thomas’s car before first responders arrived?