A woman was shot and killed by a Spartanburg police officer Monday after she pointed a gun at him during an encounter at a townhome on Kingsington Drive, according to police. The circumstances of the shooting remain under investigation.
A woman died after pointing the weapon at the officer, who then fired. Officers were involved in a shooting on Kingsington Drive in Spartanburg, though the department has not released the officer's name or additional details about what led up to the confrontation.
SLED Takes Over the Investigation
SLED was requested to respond to the shooting, and the investigation remains ongoing.
Body-worn camera footage from the encounter is unlikely to surface publicly anytime soon. South Carolina's body-camera statute, S.C. Code § 23-1-240, exempts such recordings from disclosure under the state's Freedom of Information Act, according to the Municipal Association of South Carolina, though involved parties and criminal litigants may eventually view the footage through court procedures. In 2016, the Spartanburg Police Department received grant funding to purchase 85 cameras, adding to the 20 cameras it already had.
A Tense Stretch for South Carolina Law Enforcement
Christopher DeLong, a Columbia police officer, was killed and another officer was injured during a shootout while responding to a domestic dispute, as reported by the Post and Courier. The suspect in that Columbia shooting was also killed in the exchange of gunfire. The incidents have heightened concerns about officer safety across both the Upstate and Central South Carolina regions in late August.
Spartanburg has its own painful history with line-of-duty violence involving the county Sheriff's Office. A South Carolina State Library record documents that a Spartanburg man shot by a police officer died in October 2009.
Officer-Involved Shootings Remain Steady Statewide
Officer-Involved Shootings Statewide Statewide officer-involved shooting totals and comparisons with recent years were not established in the available reporting. According to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina recorded 45 officer-involved shootings in 2024. According to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, South Carolina recorded 43 officer-involved shootings in 2023.
The state's broader crime trends cannot be assessed from the available reporting. It remains unclear what led to the confrontation on Kingsington Drive, and neither the identity of the woman nor the officer involved has been publicly released as SLED's response continues.
