Good Guy with a Gun #354: Longs, SC

| Original incident: October 21, 2024

Oct 20, 2026

These posts are based on our Good Guy with a Gun calendar. Today’s post is essentially the same as the calendar version.

Longs, South Carolina is a small town — an “unincorporated community,” in fact — that (if the Google Maps satellite view can be trusted) might have more golf courses than stop lights.

It doesn’t seem like the kind of place where you’d expect a home invader. Nevertheless, a little after 7:30 on a Monday evening, a homeowner in Longs called dispatch to report that a man was trying to get into his house. He didn’t know who the man was.

The next word to reach dispatch was that the two of them had struggled over a gun.

The homeowner fired the gun, hitting the man multiple times.

Officers found Ryan Surujnauth, 34, inside the house. He was bleeding and unconscious, and he got CPR until the medics arrived. He died at the hospital just before 1 PM.

When a TV reporter came by the next morning, a truck parked outside the house had a bullet hole in its door.

Surujnauth’s obituary says he spent most of his childhood in Connecticut, and that “he had so much more to live for and also had a lot of demons he was fighting within himself.” Perhaps. But a homeowner had to fight one of those demons personally.

Before the week was out, the Chief Prosecuting Attorney, Solicitor Jimmy Richardson, said the evidence pointed to self-defense.

“This guy did exactly what we would have all done,” he said. “There’s not going to be any charges in that case.”