Arrest made in U.S. 521 killing
Sumter County deputies on Wednesday made an arrest in the death of a Kershaw County man involved in a crash along U.S. 521 late last month.
Matthew Cory Dwyer, 21, of 218 Murphy Street in Sumter, was charged with murder in connection with the incident. He faces life in prison if convicted of the charge. He was arrested at his home without incident about 9 p.m.
Investigators allege he fired the gunshot that killed Johnny Singleton, a 65-year-old Camden resident. Singleton was shot one time in the head moments before he crashed his vehicle early the morning of Jan. 27. The single-car wreck occurred just after 1 a.m. near the Modern Turf sod farm along U.S. 521.
South Carolina Highway Patrol initially took control of the case, but later turned it over to Sumter County deputies after evidence surfaced indicating Singleton did not die from injuries he sustained in the wreck. An autopsy revealed he died from the head wound, which was obstructed by the injuries he suffered from the ensuing crash.
Braden Bunch, public information officer for the Sumter County Sheriff's Office, said the investigation alleges the main motive appears to be robbery but there may have been ancillary reasons.
Dwyer pleaded guilty to an assault and battery charge in 2011 and was sentenced to five years probation under conditions he underwent anger management counseling and drug testing.
The suspect remained jailed at Sumter-Lee Regional Detention Center as of Thursday morning awaiting a bond hearing.
While investigators from the Sheriff’s Office were wrapping up their homicide investigation, authorities at the Sumter Police Department are hoping interest in Singleton’s case can spur new information in an unsolved murder investigation with which they’ve grappled for the past 29 months.
City detectives said news of the Camden man’s recent death prompted them to revisit the cold case of Aaron Abraham, an 18-year-old teen whose decomposed body was found along Cane Savannah Road in August 2012. Authorities said someone shot him in the head and dumped him in the ditch where he was discovered near S.C. 261 near Wedgefield, little more than a month after he went missing July 19, 2012.
Investigators revealed Wednesday that Singleton had a relationship with Abraham. He was believed to have knowledge of the teen’s disappearance and his subsequent death.
“During the whole course of the investigation, he was somebody we were really interested in,” Sumter Police Chief Russell Roark III said. “The term ‘person of interest’ is really worn out. But at the end of the day, I don’t know a better way to couch it. He, in our view, was heavily involved in the life of Aaron and we believe he was in some way connected to the disappearance.”
Now police are asking for the public’s help in solving Abraham’s murder investigation, urging anyone with knowledge regarding his disappearance or killing to come forward.
According to First Sgt. Gene Williams, Singleton developed a relationship with Abraham at least a year before the teen went missing. The veteran SPD investigator, who’s continued to actively work the case, indicated Singleton surfaced as a person to speak with early in the course of the investigation and detectives questioned him about his relationship with Abraham. He noted the elder man often gave Abraham rides in his car, drove him to get haircuts, and even took him to his house to perform yard work for money.
“His thing was he just hated to see our young, black boys walking the street,” Williams said of Singleton. “So during the summer months, he would pick them up and take them up to Camden and let them cut grass and all that kind of stuff.”
But authorities seemed to suggest less than pure motives behind Singleton’s associations, saying he had developed a habit over the years of becoming involved in the lives of young, black males in ways that some deemed inappropriate. He was reportedly well known in South Sumter for the relationships he had with several teenage males.
Family members say Abraham, a rising senior at Sumter High School, dreamed of enlisting in the U.S. Navy after graduation. He also showed a strong penchant for artistry and spent much of his free time drawing, playing video games and web surfing on computers at the Sumter County Library.
“It still lives with everybody, and nobody’s satisfied with it because we still haven’t found who actually did it,” Abraham’s mother Patricia said. “Just a hard situation, and everybody wonders why this happened to him, because he never did nothing to anybody. He wasn’t a bad child. He never drank, smoke, went out to any clubs. And he never was a street person.”
Patricia Abraham remembered her oldest son as a friendly and happy child. She still keeps many of his drawings and has several key chains that he collected hanging near her front door. She said he often walked the two-mile route from their house in the 800 block of Boulevard to the Sumter library. In fact, surveillance footage at the library showed him leaving there the last day he was seen alive.
Investigators said Singleton and Abraham’s first encounter came outside a convenience store along Manning Avenue one day as he was walking home from the library. Now they are trying their best to find information about Abraham’s death to relieve his family members from the limbo of not knowing why he was so brutally killed.
“We have ownership to these tragedies, and everybody counts,” Roark said. “It is not natural for us to bury our children. And that is a wound that will never heal. We certainly can’t bring Aaron back, but if we can provide the family with real information of what actually happened, it can begin some closure and healing.”
Anyone with information can contact Williams directly at (803) 436-2725 or call the Sumter Police Department at (803) 436-2717. Tipsters can also render information anonymously by calling CrimeStoppers at 803-436-2718 or toll free at 888-CRIME-SC.
See tomorrow's edition of The Sumter Item for additional coverage.