Good Guy with a Gun #231: Rock Hill, SC

Woman tells girlfriend that she might go to jail for shooting someone. The girlfriend went to jail for the woman’s death instead. Welcome to the Felony Murder rule. | Original incident: June 19, 2024

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is significantly updated from the calendar version.

A man — let’s call him Michael¹ — got into an argument with his co-worker, Samarian Lindsay.

Samarian got in touch with her longtime girlfriend, Brittany Reed. In the phone calls and text messages that followed, Samarian asked Brittany to bring a “tool” and sent her a picture of Michael’s vehicle. She even told Brittany that “we are going to get this guy after work.”

Samarian also texted another person to say that “she might go to jail for shooting someone.” If only that were the consequence.

At around 3 PM, when Michael was leaving work, Brittany picked up Samarian — and they followed him.

Bad idea: They tried to engage with him multiple times, forcing him to evade them.

Worse: Brittany caught up to him at a nearby stoplight and blocked him in.

Worst: Brittany handed Samarian a gun.

Samarian walked up to Michael’s passenger-side window holding Brittany’s gun — so he pulled his own gun and shot Samarian multiple times.

That brought Brittany out of the car. She punched Michael in the face, but backed off when he told her to. It might be the only smart thing she did.

The police arrived. Samarian was taken to the hospital and pronounced dead. Investigators concluded that Michael acted in self-defense.

Charges

Initially, Brittany was arrested and charged with assault and battery for punching Michael — but then the police realized that it was her gun. She was then charged with murder.

This is the “felony murder” rule, where you can be charged with murder even if you didn’t pull the trigger. As the police said, “Brittany was aware at the time of doing this that a felony act would likely be committed that could result in the death of another person.”

Brittany was released on bail in August, 2024. Fifteen months after the shooting, Brittany agreed to a plea deal, according to which she could have received anything from probation to ten years in prison. By that time, she was pregnant.

Here’s an interesting bit from a September 2025 article in the Herald:

There is no precedent in South Carolina for a homicide case with similar facts so discussion with Reed’s lawyers led to the plea agreement where Reed admitted knowing there was an intention to confront the co-worker, Robinson said.

Sentencing

Her sentencing took place in November, 2025.

“This was basically an assassination attempt,” Judge Bill McKinnon said. “It’s pre-planned. I mean, they intercepted him in traffic to block his car in and then tried to kill him.”

“She can’t say she didn’t know what’s going to happen when she’s the one who brought the gun,” he added. “She gets the message to bring the gun and ‘we are going to get this guy after work.’”

He refused to extend her leniency because she was pregnant, saying “That’s not fair to defendants who are not pregnant.”

And he apparently disliked the “extraordinarily generous offer” the prosecutors had offered her, because he gave her the maximum ten-year sentence under the agreement. (Defense attorneys had requested probation.)

I can’t say he’s wrong. The only one I feel bad for in that situation is the baby.

Sources

Local news

The best reporting on this, in my opinion, came from the Rock Hill, SC paper, The Herald. You don’t need anything more than these four articles.

• No charges for man who shot, killed Rock Hill co-worker in traffic, police say

• SC woman didn’t fire a gun. Why Rock Hill police are charging her with murder in shooting

• A work argument, self-defense killing. Rock Hill woman pleads guilty to her role

• ‘Planned assassination’: SC woman sentenced in Rock Hill self-defense killing

Other sources more-or-less followed the police reports: Queen City News / NBC 2, WBTV-3, The Post and Courier (initial incident, murder charge), WCNC (initial incident, murder charge), WCCB, Radio station WRHI AM 1340 / FM 100.1.

WSOC-TV 9 covered the incident / murder charge, but also very (very) briefly covered the sentencing.

2A / specialist media

Sean Holt covered the incident for USACarry. And then there’s Smoketales.

1. I think that’s his real first name, but I’m not sure, and it doesn’t matter.

I’m departing from my normal practice and using first names throughout, both because I have a harder time keeping track of which woman is which using last names, and because it feels weird to use Michael’s first name and the women’s last names.