Two Rock Hill shootings steal peace from all

By Andrew Dys - The Herald

Gunshots make loud noises. Bullets rip flesh.

But after the echoes stop, and the victims are sent to hospitals, the people who have to live around those gunshots that are fired in public places – parks and city streets – hear those shots in their sleep and as they push children in swings.

The echoes remain from March 1, when Rock Hill saw two shootings. Nobody died, but blood was spilled.

It was spilled on Taylor Street after an argument at the hand of a man police say is Antwan Agurs, 18. Police say Agurs is responsible for three shooting incidents dating back to December and that he is both “armed and dangerous” and at this time “Rock Hill’s most wanted.”

To date, nobody has helped the police catch this man.

Blood was spilled that same day at Oakwood Acres Park, where children often play. People came back to the park after the weather got warmer a few days after that shooting – and still come. They play basketball, soccer and baseball, and watch their tiny kids use the swings and slide.

Any park – this one serves a big neighborhood of homes and apartment complexes south of Celanese Road near Mount Gallant Road – should be a place where people shed the dross of their daily lives, where they forget the jerk bosses, the piled-up bills, and find some peace.

But that shooting after an argument, even though there was an arrest three days later and the suspect is in jail and the park has had no problems since, remains on the minds of people who use the park.

Afternoons after school and work, dozens play basketball. More play soccer. The teen arrested after that shooting, an 18-year-old named Sherif Ahmad Laguda, is still in the county jail. He faces a long stretch in prison if convicted.

Real tough guys, these shooters who aren’t even old enough to legally drink, but are old enough to get ahold of handguns.

The victims and witnesses there that day helped police catch the alleged shooter, police say. It is that simple. The park returned to calm because good people had the guts to talk to the cops.

“We come out here every day and play basketball, but we know there was shooting here,” said Jason Moss, 29. “I don’t worry about safety, because the police are out here patrolling a lot. But we all know it happened.”

Keyon Huntley, 21, had one word for the shooting at the only park near his home: “Stupid.”

Charles Pippin lives in an apartment complex next to the park with his family.

“We heard the shots,” Pippin said. “Pow! Pow!”

The Pippin family uses the park often, but he never lets his daughter, Kendra, 12, go alone. Kendra used the swings this week with her friend, Shelby McClain, but Charles Pippin was right there, close by.

“I’m from the old school, and nowadays, you can’t be too careful,” said Pippin. “I don’t let her come alone.”

Bethany Rhodes, 21, grew up coming to the park and still lives nearby.

This week at the park, before the after-work and after-school crowd showed, she used the swings alone in the park. Just the rustle of the chains, a few minutes to clear her head. Just what parks are supposed to be.

“I heard about the shooting, saw it on the news and in the paper, and I am scared,” Rhodes said. “I never come here at night.”

Sadly, even that precaution might not be enough, since the March 1 shooting happened before the sun went down.

Yet every echo from that gun still resonates with people trying to use the park. An arrest does not erase gunshots and blood. It does not replace the calm that these shooters take from regular people.

Stealing of life happens anywhere there are gunshots in public places.

Another shooting

Across this city on Taylor Street that night, just minutes before the Oakwood Acres shooting, police say Antwan Agurs shot another man – shot him in the back.

It all happened on a street filled with mostly the elderly, who have earned the right to sit on a porch and watch the world go by. Agurs was on a bicycle, police said.