1-page report says Tanglewood school shooting may be gang related, other records withheld

A Tanglewood Middle School shooting that left a 12-year-old dead and another student in custody was "possibly gang related," according to a one-page incident report the Greenville County Sheriff's Office released this week while refusing to release additional records.

The Greenville News obtained the report Thursday — nearly a month after the March 31 shooting — in response to a Freedom of Information Act request for documents pertaining to the school shooting.

The Sheriff's Office has declined to release any additional records to date, citing exemptions to public records laws. The Greenville County Coroner's Office has also declined to release its investigative report due to the ongoing law enforcement investigation.

Wesley Vorberger, a General Counsel at the Greenville County Sheriff's Office, said because the case is still active and the prosecution is pending, they are limited with what the Sheriff's Office can provide without interfering in the ongoing prosecution or depriving the defendant of a fair trial.

Supplemental reports will be made available upon request after the prosecution has concluded and those exemptions are no longer applicable, Vorberger said.

South Carolina Press Association attorney Taylor Smith said the Sheriff's Office should be redacting specific information they deem exempt, not withholding reports from the public entirely.

If the intention of the department is to exercise an exemption to the things the law allows them to — to withhold information that might in a very specific manner hurt their investigation in an enumerated way — their remedy is to redact that information, not withhold the entire records, Smith said.

"To say this department has no other such report seems to indicate they either choosing to ignore the requirement of our state's open records law or are conducting even the most rudimentary level of investigation needed by the public," he said.

Apart from a reference to the shooting being possibly "gang related," the one-page incident report stated that the school's resource officer arrived at the incident location in response to what he thought to be a gunshot in the hallway.

On March 31, 12-year-old Jamari Cortez Bonaparte Jackson was shot at least once in the 700 wing of the school by another 12-year-old student who was arrested, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Previous reporting:Student in custody after fatal shooting at Tanglewood Middle School in Greenville SC

The student in custody, who has not been publicly identified as he is a minor, left school after the shots were fired and was found outside a home on Easley Bridge Road, the Sheriff's Office has said. 

The boy is charged with murder, possession of a weapon during a violent crime, possession of a firearm on school property and unlawful possession of a weapon by a person under the age of 18. He remains in custody at the Department of Juvenile Justice in Columbia.

Following:What's next for child charged with murder in Tanglewood school shooting in Greenville

The two students did know each other, according to the Sheriff's Office.

Earlier this month, attorneys of the 12-year-old who is charged with murder, waived his initial hearing in family court. A new date for his 30-day detention hearing has not yet been set.

South Carolina is one of 13 states that has no minimum age for trying children as adults, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit that provides legal representation to people who have been unfairly sentenced or illegally convicted.

Tamia Boyd is a Michigan native who covers breaking news in Greenville. Email her at tboyd@gannett.com, and follow her on Twitter @tamiamb.