A production supervisor at NRTC Automation's Piedmont facility was shot and killed in the employee parking lot on May 17, 2024, as she arrived for work at about 6:45 a.m., and now her estate is suing the staffing company that placed her alleged killer at the site. The lawsuit claims Express Services, Inc. never ran the background check it promised would keep violent offenders off the job.
Glenda Strickland, personal representative of Katy Jones' estate, filed the wrongful death and survival claims against Express Services and Derek Snyder in the Anderson County Court of Common Pleas on August 24, according to Independent Mail. Jones, 36, of Williamston, South Carolina, was Snyder's direct supervisor at the time of the shooting. The complaint alleges that Snyder approached her vehicle in the employee lot and fired multiple shots, killing her.
Jones was taken to Prisma Health Greenville Memorial Hospital, where she was later pronounced dead. The Anderson County Coroner's Office ruled her death a homicide. Snyder was arrested the same day in Buford, Georgia — roughly 100 miles from the Piedmont facility — after law enforcement executed a traffic stop as he left a residence, according to a statement from the Anderson County Sheriff's Office reported by Crime Online. He was held in Gwinnett County before extradition to South Carolina, where he was charged with murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime.
What the Lawsuit Claims Went Wrong
According to the complaint, Express Services hired Snyder as a temporary employee in July 2023 and later assigned him to NRTC's Piedmont facility. NRTC operates an industrial automation and robot refurbishment operation at 100 Exchange Logistics Park Drive, with additional facilities in Alabama, Michigan and Canada, per its own company information. The staffing agency and NRTC had entered a written agreement in December 2020 that, the estate alleges, required Express Services to conduct criminal-history checks on workers upon NRTC's request.
The estate alleges Express Services represented that it was conducting full background checks and would not place workers with violent criminal histories at NRTC, and that it did conduct such checks on other temporary employees — but failed to do so for Snyder. The lawsuit claims Snyder's criminal history, which allegedly included domestic violence, assault and battery, and threatening the life of a public official dating back more than a decade, could have been discovered through a background check or publicly available records. South Carolina residents and employers can pull that kind of history directly through the state's CATCH system for a $25 fee using a name and date of birth, according to the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division.
Negligence, Breach of Contract and a Jury Demand
The estate's filing accuses Express Services of negligence, gross negligence, and recklessness, and alleges the company breached its staffing agreement with NRTC. It further claims Express Services made negligent misrepresentations about its screening practices, failed to warn NRTC and its employees that Snyder had not been screened, and that this failure was a direct and proximate cause of Jones' death. The estate also argues Jones was an intended third-party beneficiary of the staffing agreement between Express Services and NRTC.
Separately, the complaint accuses Snyder of assault and battery and alleges he intentionally and unlawfully shot Jones multiple times. The wrongful death claim seeks damages for financial losses, grief and sorrow, loss of companionship, and loss of Jones' society and comfort, while the survival claim seeks compensation for physical pain and suffering, emotional distress, medical expenses, and funeral and burial costs. The estate is seeking actual, consequential, and punitive damages, though the lawsuit does not specify a dollar amount, and has requested a jury trial.
Legal Path Around Workers' Comp
Because South Carolina's workers' compensation system generally serves as the exclusive remedy against a direct employer, the estate's approach — suing the staffing agency as a third party — relies on a 2021 precedent. In Keene v. CNA Holdings, LLC, the South Carolina Supreme Court established that businesses using third-party contractors or staffing agencies are not automatically shielded from tort negligence lawsuits by workers' compensation's exclusive remedy rules, according to legal analysis from Maynard Nexsen.
More recent case law could complicate the estate's negligent hiring claims. In Moore v. Green's Grocery, LLC, decided this past June, the state Supreme Court held that an employer cannot face civil liability for negligent hiring, supervision, or retention without first establishing underlying wrongful conduct by the employee involved, according to Ogletree Deakins. Express Services, operated by Express Services, Inc., is an international staffing franchisor headquartered in Oklahoma City that supports more than 850 individually owned franchise locations, with local franchise owners retaining hiring discretion within corporate guidelines.
A Case Still Working Through Anderson County Court
The civil complaint does not by itself establish liability, and the lawsuit's allegations remain unproven in court as the case proceeds through the legal process. Snyder's pending murder charge will move separately through Anderson County's criminal courts even as the wrongful death case unfolds in the same county's Court of Common Pleas, part of South Carolina's Tenth Judicial Circuit, which also covers neighboring Oconee County.
The shooting adds to a broader pattern tracked nationally: federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded 458 workplace homicides in 2023, and while men account for the overwhelming majority of total occupational deaths, homicides made up 18.3 percent of workplace fatalities among women compared with roughly 8 percent among men. Federal OSHA relies on the General Duty Clause of the Occupational Safety and Health Act to require employers to keep workplaces free of recognized hazards, including violence, in the absence of a dedicated workplace violence standard. Statewide, South Carolina's violent crime rate had fallen for four consecutive years through 2024 to its lowest level since 1995, with homicides down 15.8 percent, according to South Carolina Law Enforcement Division data reported by WJCL — even as Anderson County continues to see periodic violent incidents. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, North Carolina recorded 177 fatal work injuries in 2023 and 196 in 2024, while violent acts rose from 17 to 35. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Georgia recorded 192 fatal work injuries in 2023 and 170 in 2024, while violent acts declined from 32 to 26. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration's South Carolina FAME Report, compliance conducted six inspections related to workplace violence during the fiscal year. According to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, South Carolina operates an OSHA-approved State Plan covering most private-sector workers and all state and local government workers.
