Background: News footage of Charles Saunders in court after being found guilty on Feb. 19 (WTOC). Inset (left to right): Bernard Lyles and Alesia Dykes (Legacy Funeral Home).
A New York man who fatally shot a South Carolina couple who were once friends of his family will spend the rest of his life in prison.
Charles Saunders, 50, was found guilty of the murders of 40-year-old Alesia Dykes and 38-year-old Bernard Lyles on Thursday. Dykes and Lyles were a couple living in Hardeeville, a city in the southern part of the state close to the Georgia border, and opened their home to Saunders” adult son, whose mother is Dykes’ sister. Saunders’ son had just had a baby, and Saunders was visiting the area from New York when he came to the couple’s apartment on June 18, 2024.
Trasi Campbell of the 14th Circuit Solicitor’s Office said Saunders and Lyles had been arguing in the days before he showed up, and Saunders posted “a video of himself holding firearms and threatening to shoot someone” on social media.
According to Campbell, Saunders arrived at Dykes’ and Lyles’ apartment that afternoon and began having a verbal argument with the couple. The altercation soon turned physical, and the couple went back inside their home. Saunders followed them and fired a 9 mm handgun into the home while three children were inside.
Saunders fled, and one of the children ran to a relative’s home nearby to get help. Dykes was pronounced dead at the scene, and Lyles succumbed to his injuries at the hospital.
Surveillance cameras caught Saunders as he tried to evade law enforcement after the shooting. He removed his shirt and threw it in a dumpster; police found it and determined it had gunshot residue on it. Saunders was captured getting into a car and being dropped off at a Waffle House. Police found him there and arrested him on the spot.
Local CBS affiliate WTOC was in the courtroom for the three-day trial. Dykes’ sister testified that she found out Dykes and Lyles were shot when her nephew told her, “‘Iz shot momma and Boo Boo too,” referring respectively to Saunders, Dykes, and Lyles.
Saunders’ defense attorneys attempted to argue that he acted in self-defense when he shot Lyles and Dykes. The jury was not convinced, and it returned a guilty verdict on two counts of murder after about an hour.
Saunders was sentenced to two life sentences plus five years.
