BEAUFORT, S.C. (October 27, 2021) – A 20-year-old Lady’s Island man has been convicted of murdering an acquaintance he believed to be a romantic rival.
In November 2019, Cameron Chan’ou Kim shot Ethan Thomas Bosworth, 20, during a brief, late-night encounter in the Southside area of Beaufort. A Beaufort County General Sessions jury on Wednesday found Kim guilty of murder. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison.
“Jealousy is one of the oldest motives for murder in the book,” said Mary Jones of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office, who prosecuted the case. “Cameron Kim was anxious to prove his ‘street cred’ by killing someone, and his belief that his girlfriend had cheated on him with Ethan Bosworth is all the prompting he needed to fulfill that sick fantasy.”
Beaufort Police were called to the 2700 block of Waddell Road shortly after 10 p.m. on Nov. 22, 2019, after receiving a report of shots fired and a single-vehicle accident. They arrived to find Bosworth’s Ford Mustang crashed into a tree, with bullet holes visible in the rear window.
Officers found Bosworth lying unresponsive near his vehicle. He died of his injuries that night, and an autopsy at the Medical University of South Carolina determined he had been shot three times.
Bosworth’s unlocked cellphone was discovered in his vehicle, and the display showed a Snapchat message from a “Cam Cam,” as well as several calls between he and Kim, including one just two minutes before the shooting was reported to 911.
Neighborhood residents reported seeing three people on foot running from the area just after the sound of gunshots.
Jones called 22 witnesses during two days of testimony, including experts from the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division, the Medical University of South Carolina, eyewitnesses and several acquaintances of both Kim and Bosworth.
The evidence showed that in the days before Bosworth’s murder, Kim was angered because he believed Bosworth had become a romantic rival for his girlfriend. He also had recently acquired a .32 caliber handgun and was “itching” to kill someone with it.
After a day of drinking and smoking marijuana, Kim departed on foot from the home where he had been partying and arranged to meet Bosworth in the Waddell Road area. When Bosworth drove up in his Mustang, Kim shot him three times through the open passenger-side window, likely killing him instantly. The vehicle then rolled into a tree along the roadside.
The immediate aftermath of the shooting was witnessed by one of Kim’s friends, who had been walking several yards ahead of him after leaving the party with him. The shots also were heard by a third person who had attended the party but turned down a road to go to his home nearby just before Bosworth arrived.
Afterward, Kim boasted to friends about the killing.
Circuit Court Judge Carmen T. Mullen handed down the sentence.
Jones is a member of the Solicitor’s Office Career Criminal Unit, which prosecutes the circuit’s most violent and habitual offenders. That team has earned convictions against 384 of the 403 defendants it has prosecuted since its inception in late 2008.
