The solicitor’s office said the evidence supported a youth offender sentence for Damarion Nealy.
CONWAY, S.C. — Prosecutors said the evidence in a fatal family shooting supported involuntary manslaughter, leading a judge to sentence an 18-year-old Loris man for killing his uncle.
Damarion Nealy pleaded guilty in the 2025 death of Gregory Johnson II, 20, in Horry County. Nealy was 17 when Johnson was shot and was sentenced under the Youthful Offender Act, with prison time not to exceed five years. The 15th Judicial Circuit Solicitor’s Office announced the outcome after describing a shooting that began with Johnson firing at deer from a vehicle and ended with Nealy admitting he held the pistol when it discharged.
The legal question at the end of the case was not whether Johnson died from the gunshot. It was how the law would define Nealy’s responsibility. Prosecutors said Johnson had handed the pistol to Nealy and asked whether he wanted to take a shot. Because Nealy was 17, officials said, he was not legally allowed to handle the gun. Prosecutors said he pointed it at Johnson’s head with his finger on the trigger and applied enough pressure to fire. Nealy then left the scene, and Johnson died a short time later. Violent Crimes Assistant Solicitor James D. Stanko said the facts and evidence showed involuntary manslaughter was the appropriate charge. “We feel this was a fair resolution to these tragic events,” Stanko said.
Involuntary manslaughter gave the case a specific legal frame. Prosecutors did not publicly describe evidence that Nealy planned to shoot Johnson or meant to kill him. They did not describe a fight, a robbery or a long-running conflict. Instead, their statement centered on criminally reckless handling of a firearm by a teenager who was too young to possess it. The admission that the gun “went off” while Nealy held it did not end the legal issue, because a person can be criminally responsible for a death even without intent to kill. In this case, the state pointed to the act of handling the gun, pointing it at Johnson and placing pressure on the trigger as the conduct that supported the plea.
The case began before dawn June 1, 2025, with a report of gunfire in the Conway area. Local reports said Horry County police were called around 12:30 a.m. to the area of South Carolina Highway 905. Officers found Johnson with a wound to the head near the back of a residence. Early accounts said he was pronounced dead at the scene. Officials later said Johnson had been sitting in a vehicle outside his home when he was shot. Police arrested Nealy later that day, around 3 p.m., and charged him with involuntary manslaughter. He was booked at the J. Reuben Long Detention Center, where early reports listed a $100,000 bond. Those first reports left many details unanswered, including the immediate circumstances of the gunfire.
The sentencing announcement supplied the missing sequence. Johnson was in the driver’s seat, prosecutors said, and had been shooting at deer in the woods. He then offered the gun to Nealy. The solicitor’s account did not say how long Nealy held the weapon before it fired, how close the two were inside the vehicle or whether any warning was spoken before the shot. It also did not identify the pistol model or say whether the gun had been examined in open court. Those points remained outside the public summary. What prosecutors did state was enough for the plea: Nealy handled the gun unlawfully, aimed it toward Johnson’s head and fired the shot that caused the death.
The Youthful Offender Act sentence shaped the punishment. Nealy was a minor at the time of the shooting and 18 at the time of the guilty plea. The act can allow a judge to impose a sentence for a young defendant that is different from a standard adult sentence. The public result in Nealy’s case was a term capped at five years. The solicitor’s office did not announce that Nealy received a suspended sentence, and it described him as headed to prison. It did not report a pending trial or additional hearings after the plea. The guilty plea also meant Johnson’s relatives would not have to sit through a trial over the fatal moment, though the public record does not include any victim impact statements from the hearing.
Johnson’s background entered the public account through obituary and memorial details rather than court filings. He had recently started a landscaping business with his father, according to his obituary. It said he wanted to supplement his income and talked about rebuilding his grandmother’s old barn, renovating a shed and adding to his house. A public memorial page described him as hard working, funny, outgoing and close to family. The details showed a 20-year-old focused on work and home projects before his death. They also sharpened the family dimension of the case. Johnson was Nealy’s uncle, but the two were close enough in age that the shooting involved two young relatives in the same vehicle.
The public timeline now runs from a late-night shooting call to an arrest, then from a sparse charge to a guilty plea with a fuller account. On June 1, police responded and Johnson was found dead. On the same day, Nealy was arrested. In early coverage, authorities said he had pointed a firearm at Johnson before the shot. In April 2026, prosecutors said Johnson had handed him the pistol after firing at deer. The final account did not erase the earlier facts. It placed them in order and explained why the state resolved the case as manslaughter rather than taking it to trial on a different theory.
The outcome leaves a formal conviction, a capped prison sentence and a record of a fatal mistake that prosecutors said carried criminal weight. Johnson’s death remains the central harm. Nealy’s sentence is the court’s answer to how that harm was caused.
Author note: Last updated May 7, 2026.