A late-night shooting inside a gas station near Surfside Beach that initially left police searching for answers has been classified as a murder-suicide, with the Horry County Coroner’s Office naming 43-year-old Bruce Taylor of Georgetown as the man who fatally shot 46-year-old Christina Hammers of Myrtle Beach Resort before turning the gun on himself. A store clerk was also shot and is expected to survive.
The shooting happened shortly after 11:30 p.m. Wednesday inside the Murphy gas station at 199 Maryport Drive, near South Kings Highway, according to Horry County Chief Deputy Coroner Tamara Willard, as reported by WMBF. Willard told the station that Taylor and Hammers walked into the store together, and that Taylor grabbed Hammers, shot her, then walked across the store and shot himself. Horry County Police officers were initially dispatched to the scene around 11:45 p.m., as reported by WLTX.
When officers first arrived, they found multiple gunshot victims but had not yet released details on the number of people hurt, their conditions, or any possible motive, according to the initial police report cited by WMBF. That uncertainty has since been resolved: the Horry County Police Department confirmed that the third person shot during the incident was a store clerk, whose injuries were determined to be non-life-threatening, according to the Post and Courier.
How Investigators Pieced Together the Scene
Responding officers secured the gas station before handing the scene over to the department’s Criminal Investigations Division, following standard protocol for major violent crimes in Horry County. That handoff, in which patrol officers lock down a scene for detectives and forensic teams to process, is the department’s typical approach to homicide and shooting investigations, per the same account. Investigators have not disclosed what relationship existed between Taylor and Hammers or what led the pair to the gas station together that night.
The Murphy station sits on Maryport Drive directly across from South Kings Highway, opposite the entrance to several gated communities, including Myrtle Beach Resort, where Hammers lived. The location places the shooting just steps from where one of the victims made her home, in the stretch of unincorporated Horry County between Surfside Beach and Myrtle Beach.
A Case That Echoes Statewide Domestic Violence Trends
The shooting comes against a backdrop of South Carolina’s permitless carry law, House Bill 3594, which took effect in March 2024 and allows eligible residents 18 and older to carry handguns openly or concealed in public without a permit, background check, or mandatory safety training, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division. That same year, statewide violent crime fell 8.4% and the murder rate dropped 15.8% compared to 2023, per SLED’s annual crime data.
Even as overall violence declined, intimate partner violence has remained a significant driver of homicides in the state. SLED statistics reported by the Post and Courier found that intimate partner violence accounted for 27% of all murders and nonnegligent manslaughters in South Carolina. State law, under South Carolina Code § 16-25-30, bars people convicted of first-degree domestic violence or those under active domestic violence protective orders from purchasing or possessing firearms and ammunition, according to the South Carolina Legislature. It remains unclear whether that statute had any bearing on this case, as investigators have not released details about Taylor’s or Hammers’s legal or relationship history.
Horry County Police have not indicated any ongoing threat to the public tied to the shooting. The investigation into the exact circumstances that brought Taylor and Hammers to the gas station together remains active.
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