A Walterboro woman has been sentenced to 35 years in prison after a Colleton County jury convicted her of murder in the shooting death of her estranged husband's companion last year. Michelle Gladys Bingley was found guilty Thursday in the April 28, 2025, killing of Tineseing Lachell Johns, who was shot outside her vehicle on Grace Street.
According to the Fourteenth Circuit Solicitor's Office, Bingley, identified in that account as 43 and of Wichman Street, fired into Johns's car after her estranged husband refused to get out of the vehicle. Bingley told investigators she “lost her mind” when he wouldn't leave, fired into the car and then fled the scene, per the solicitor's office. A few days after the shooting, she turned herself in to authorities.
Earlier reporting from WTOC had identified Bingley as 41 at the time of her arrest, a discrepancy with the solicitor's office's more recent account listing her age as 43. Walterboro police were dispatched to Grace Street around 11:30 p.m. on April 28, 2025, according to WTMA, where officers found Johns suffering from a gunshot wound outside her vehicle.
Autopsy Confirmed Homicide
An autopsy performed at MUSC ruled Johns's death a homicide caused by a gunshot wound, the solicitor's office reported. Investigators collected a .38-caliber bullet from the vehicle, and testimony presented at trial indicated the bullet recovered from the autopsy was consistent with a revolver, the station's report on the case noted.
The trial itself stretched over three days at the courthouse in Walterboro, with the Colleton County jury ultimately returning convictions on multiple charges beyond murder. Bingley was also found guilty of high and aggravated domestic violence, possession of a weapon during the commission of a violent crime, and discharging a firearm into an occupied vehicle, per the same account from the solicitor's office.
Judge Hands Down 35-Year Term
Circuit Court Judge Donald B. Hocker handed down the 35-year sentence following the jury's verdict. The solicitor's office did not provide a breakdown of how the sentence applies across Bingley's individual convictions.
The shooting left Johns's family and the Walterboro community to grapple with a killing rooted in a domestic dispute that spilled onto a residential street in the middle of the night. More than a year after the shooting, the case's resolution closes out a prosecution that moved from a dispatched 911 call on Grace Street to a jury's verdict and a Colleton County courtroom sentencing.
