Rock Hill double murder suspect who shot 3 at smoke shop a public danger: Judge
A Columbia man whose lawyers admit killed two people and wounded another in a mass shooting at a Rock Hill smoke shop will remain jailed.
Circuit Judge Bill McKinnon refused to release Zachary East Elias on bail, despite Elias’ lawyers arguing in York County criminal court Elias shot the people after taking an illegal drug in a chocolate bar Elias bought and ate Dec. 4.
Celcei Johnson, 27, of Rock Hill, a female employee at the Budiman’s store on Cherry Road, died in the shooting. Emad Thabet Saadalla, 49, of Rock Hill, a customer at the store, also died at the scene. Saadalla’s wife was wounded.
Kevin Brackett, York County’s top prosecutor, countered that Elias knowingly bought and ate the bar with the intent of altering his reality. Brackett played video of the killings from the Budiman’s store that show a yelling and shirtless Elias rush into the store with an assault rifle before shooting at four people inside. Three were hit.
Elias faces two counts of murder, two counts of attempted murder and weapons charges. He’s been jailed since shortly after the shootings when he crashed his car into a bridge while fleeing from police.
Elias hung his head in court as the video was played that showed him rush into the store with the rifle and spray the people inside with bullets. He did not speak in court Monday.
His family packed one side of the standing-room only courtroom, while family members of the victims filled the other side.
Judge: Elias a danger to the community
McKinnon said in court it is not clear what levels or amounts of drugs were in the chocolate. He told defense lawyers Shaun Kent and Alexandra Benevento they were making a “huge ask” to release someone who admittedly killed two people.
“You have a client who by your own admission walked into a business and shot three people, and killed two of them,” McKinnon said.
McKinnon said from what he saw presented Monday, Elias remains a threat to public safety.
“If this were alcohol, and somebody who was a lightweight drinker and drank a beer or two occasionally, and they drank a whole bottle of vodka and killed two people and wounded a third, that would not make me think they were less dangerous,” McKinnon said in court.
He said Elias’ case might be different from that, but from what he heard Monday, it is not.
“The defendant voluntarily ingested a product which describes itself as magic mushroom chocolate,” McKinnon said.
Defense: Elias did not know he had taken illegal drug
Benevento told McKinnon the shootings were a “profound tragedy,” but argued the psilocin in the chocolate bar caused Elias to have “drug-induced psychosis.”
Elias had no previous mental health problems or criminal record, she said. He did not know the drug in the chocolate was in it because she claimed in court the chocolate bar was deceptively marketed and mislabeled.
Elias was not “a crazy person with a gun,” Benevento said in court.
Psilocin is the chemical found in certain hallucinogenic mushrooms, testimony showed Monday. Benevento said psilocin is illegal in South Carolina.
“It was that psychosis that took him back to the store,” she told McKinnon.
Elias also had THC — the active ingredient in marijuana — in his blood, testimony showed.
Prosecutor: Elias ate the chocolate with intent to alter reality
Brackett said Elias was so familiar with the store and the chocolate bars he had a regular customer discount and spent $180 total on the chocolate and THC gummies earlier in the day before the killings. Elias also had eaten part of a similar bar days earlier, Brackett said.
“This was an intentional act on his part with tragic consequences,” Brackett told McKinnon.
The shooting video — which the judge instructed was not to be recorded or aired publicly by the media or anyone else in court — showed Elias yelling “Where’s the mushroom man?” as he comes in the store firing the assault rifle. The three victims who were shot fall to the floor as Elias continued to yell and seek out other persons in the store.
“I’m Jesus Christ,” Elias says on the video. “They wrote the book about me.”
Brackett opposed bail for Elias, as did the clerk who survived the shooting and the families of the two people killed.
Elias will remain at the York County jail. No trial date has been set.
This story was originally published September 15, 2025 at 2:23 PM.
