Fifteen years ago, on Tuesday, Oct. 25, 2011, a shotgun blast tore through the front door of a Pierpont Avenue home in West Ashley, sent pellets through an interior wall, and struck 5-year-old Allison Griffor as she slept in her bed. She died in the hospital days later. No one has ever been charged with her murder.
According to the ABC News 4 account of that night, Allison was asleep when someone knocked on her family's door on Oct. 25, 2011. The Charleston County Sheriff's Office has said that as her father went to answer, a shotgun was fired through the door. Several pellets passed through the door and a wall into the room where she was sleeping, striking her in the head, according to the Post and Courier. She was taken to MUSC, and both the Post and Courier and ABC News 4 reported she died two days after the shooting; the Post and Courier reported she died at Medical University Hospital.
Investigators have said they believe the Griffor house was hit by mistake, possibly targeted over drugs, per ABC News 4's reporting. The case has carried that grim irony for a decade and a half: a family that, by investigators' own account, may never have been the intended target at all.
Suspects Named, But No Murder Charge
In June 2015, the sheriff named three possible suspects in connection with the case, according to WIS-TV. Shyrome Jaquane Johnson was arrested that month on a charge of obstruction of justice, with bail set at $200,000, the outlet reported.
No murder charge followed for any of the four men named that year, and more than a decade later, that remains the case. A report from Count on 2 found that investigators had developed persons of interest but that no one had been arrested for or charged with Allison's murder. Detectives also never recovered the .12-gauge shotgun used in the shooting, according to WIS-TV, which reported last year that the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI had also taken part in the investigation alongside Charleston County authorities.
A Case That Has Stretched Across Multiple Anniversaries
The years since have brought periodic updates but little resolution. Detective Barry Goldstein told WLOS in 2022 that the investigation remained active, saying, “The investigation began that night and has continued to this day.” At the time, authorities said they were still trying to track down neighbors and witnesses who may not have cooperated with investigators earlier on.
By 2025, WIS-TV reported that after 14 years, no one had been charged in the killing — a line echoed in the Post and Courier's earlier reporting that the investigation remained ongoing as detectives worked to develop enough probable cause to make an arrest, with no additional arrests forthcoming at that time.
A Related Case, and a Suspect Who Never Faced Trial
Two of the men named in the Griffor investigation have other convictions tied to the same stretch of West Ashley around that period. Phillip Moses and Levell Grant pleaded guilty in September 2013 to second-degree burglary and strong-arm robbery charges connected to a separate West Ashley home invasion that happened three days before the shooting that killed Allison, according to the Post and Courier. The Post and Courier also reported that Kyron James Lamar Bailey pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary and armed robbery and was sentenced to 20 years in prison by Circuit Judge Eugene C. Griffith.
The case has outlived multiple rounds of public appeals. The Charleston County Sheriff's Office continues to seek information about the case.
Anyone with information is asked to contact CCSO Detective Phillip Alger by phone at 843-529-6205 or by email at [email protected], according to ABC News 4's reporting. Fifteen years after a mistaken knock on a door changed a family's life forever, Allison Griffor's killer has still not been identified.
