3 men, 1 woman identified as dead after weekend bar shooting in South Carolina

ST. HELENA ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — Authorities on Monday identified the three men and a woman who were killed during a weekend mass shooting at a bar on a South Carolina island. At least 20 other people were wounded.

Willie’s Bar and Grill on St. Helena Island was crowded with people when the shooting started on Sunday, including many who had attended Battery Creek High School in Beaufort and were at the bar for an alumni event.

Flowers and candles were placed outside the bar on Monday as the Beaufort County coroner’s office identified the dead as Kashawn Glaze, 22, Chiraad Smalls, 33, Amos Gary, 54 and A’shan’tek Milledge, 22.

Sheriff’s Lt. Danny Allen said Monday that investigators had no new information to share.

It’s hard “to have your name on the door and not feel the weight of what’s happening,” bar owner Willie Turral told WCSC-TV.

Willie’s Bar serves Gullah-inspired cuisine and describes itself on its website as “not just a restaurant but a community pillar committed to giving back, especially to our youth.”

An estimated 5,000 or more Gullah people living on the island trace their ancestry back to enslaved West Africans who once worked rice plantations in the area before being freed by the Civil War.