On the morning of December 17, 2017, Rodney T. Leak, a 41-year-old Black man who worked as a manager at City Nightz bar and grill on Old Dunbar Road in West Columbia, was shot and killed shortly after the 2 a.m. closing. Two masked men entered through a side door intending to rob the club; one raised a handgun in a back office where Leak and several others were present and opened fire. Leak was struck multiple times and pronounced dead at the scene.

Lexington County investigators processed the scene and recovered a .40-caliber Smith & Wesson magazine clip that contained a fingerprint and DNA. Those prints and DNA were matched to 27-year-old Christopher Jamel Brisbon of Columbia, and he was arrested days later on December 21, 2017, during a traffic stop and charged in connection with the killing. The second suspect who participated in the robbery and shooting has not been identified and remains at large.