Earl David Goodwater, a 53-year-old Black man from Goose Creek, South Carolina, was shot and killed at his family home on Westminster Boulevard in the St. James Estates neighborhood on the night of May 13, 2023. Deputies were dispatched shortly before 10:30 p.m. after a 911 call about a family argument; while officers were en route they were told someone had been shot. Goodwater was found with a gunshot wound and pronounced dead at the scene.

According to testimony later presented at trial, the incident began after Goodwater’s daughter and her fiancé, Joshua Scott-Lee Butler, argued earlier that evening. Testimony says the argument continued in the driveway, where Butler struck the daughter. The couple went inside to get their 1-year-old child and the daughter called to her father for help. A physical confrontation between Goodwater and Butler moved into the front yard, and family members briefly separated them. Prosecutors presented evidence that Butler then retrieved a 9mm handgun from his vehicle, returned, placed Goodwater in a headlock and, during a struggle, fired a single fatal shot to Goodwater’s right cheek beneath the cheekbone. Butler was arrested at the scene; initial charges included voluntary manslaughter and second-degree domestic violence.

Did anyone in the neighborhood see events in the driveway or the moment Butler returned from his vehicle?