HAMPTON, SC (Aug. 9, 2017) – A Hampton County man who shot an Estill police officer on New Year’s Day in 2016 was sentenced Wednesday to 35 years in prison.
A jury found Malcolm Antwan Orr, 29, of Grayson Street, guilty of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime following a two-day trial at the Hampton County Courthouse. Orr was sentenced to the maximum amount of time: 30 years for the attempted murder offense and five years for the weapons violation. The sentences are to be served consecutively.
Estill Police Officer Quincy Smith was shot four times Jan. 1, 2016, while responding to a call. A camera in Smith’s glasses, which the officer purchased for himself on Amazon, captured the incident.
Smith’s voice can be heard in the recording as he lay outside his patrol car, He told the emergency dispatcher, “Tell my family that I love them.”
“If but not for the grace of God and some very good doctors, this would not only have been a murder case, but a death penalty case,” said 14th Circuit Solicitor Duffie Stone, who prosecuted the case.
At about 11 a.m., Smith responded to a suspicious persons call at the Charles Party Shop along U.S. 321. A clerk told Smith that a man wearing camouflage and a red bandana tried snatching groceries from customers. Smith spotted a man matching that description walking away from the store along Railroad Avenue. Smith drove his patrol car a short distance toward the man, who was later identified as Orr. Smith parked and ordered Orr to stop. Orr refused and continued to walk away from Smith, holding a cellphone to his ear and keeping his right hand in his jacket pocket. Smith told him to take his hand out or he would “be tasered”. That’s when Orr brandished a 9 mm handgun and began firing, never taking the phone away from his ear.
Smith was fired upon, “not once, not twice, not three times, or four, or five, or six, or seven, but eight times,” said Stone said during closing arguments. Stone placed each of the spent 9 mm casing on the railing at the jury box. Smith was struck at least three times, suffering two broken arm bones and a “life threatening” neck injury. At least two of the eight rounds were fired while Smith was lying on the ground and another two were fired as Smith ran for cover, back to his parked patrol car.
Dr. James Dunne, the emergency room physician who treated Smith at Memorial Health Medical Center in Savannah, testified that a bullet completely severed a vein in the right side of Smith’s neck. A bullet also passed through Smith’s upper torso and was extracted from his back.
The jury deliberated for less than 45 minutes before coming back with a guilty verdict.
Circuit Court Judge Roger Young handed down Wednesday’s sentence.
