Gregory Johnson II was 20 when he was shot during a gun handling incident near Conway.
CONWAY, S.C. — Gregory Johnson II was building a small landscaping business with his father when a fatal shooting involving his teenage nephew ended his life and led to a manslaughter conviction.
Johnson, 20, died June 1, 2025, after he was shot in the head in Horry County. His nephew, Damarion Nealy, later pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors said Nealy, now 18, was 17 at the time of the shooting and was sentenced under South Carolina’s Youthful Offender Act to no more than five years in prison. The legal result came more than 10 months after police first responded to a shots fired call near Conway and found Johnson with a fatal wound.
Family descriptions of Johnson show what was lost before the case reached its plea. His obituary said he had an entrepreneurial spirit and had convinced his father to help him develop a landscaping business so he could supplement his income. It said he talked about rebuilding his grandmother’s old barn, renovating a shed and adding to his house. Public memorial pages described him as funny, outgoing, hardworking and devoted to family. Those accounts gave a young man’s name and plans to a case first known publicly through booking records, police reports and a criminal charge. Johnson was only three years older than Nealy, but their relationship was uncle and nephew, a family bond that made the shooting both a homicide case and a private loss.
The fatal sequence described by prosecutors began with Johnson in the driver’s seat of a vehicle. He had been firing a pistol at deer in the woods, officials said. At some point, Johnson handed the firearm to Nealy and asked whether he wanted to take a shot. Prosecutors said Nealy’s age made it illegal for him to handle the gun. They said Nealy took the pistol, pointed it at Johnson’s head and had his finger on the trigger with enough pressure to fire the weapon. One shot struck Johnson in the head. Nealy fled, and Johnson died a short time later. Nealy later admitted to police that he was holding the gun when it fired and said the gun “went off.”
The first public reports did not include all of those details. They said Horry County police responded around 12:30 a.m. Sunday to the Highway 905 area near Conway after a report of shots fired. Officers found Johnson near the back of a residence with a wound to the head, and he was pronounced dead. Authorities later said he had been shot while seated in a vehicle outside his home. Nealy was arrested around 3 p.m. the same day, according to early reports, and charged with involuntary manslaughter. He was booked into the J. Reuben Long Detention Center, and a $100,000 bond was listed. At that time, officials said the investigation was limited in what could be released, and the question of why Nealy pointed the gun at Johnson remained publicly unclear.
The solicitor’s office later said the evidence showed the killing fit involuntary manslaughter. Violent Crimes Assistant Solicitor James D. Stanko, who prosecuted the case, said the facts supported that charge under the circumstances. “We feel this was a fair resolution to these tragic events,” Stanko said. The wording of the statement was important because it drew a line between the death and an intentional killing. Prosecutors did not say Nealy planned the shooting or acted from anger toward Johnson. They focused instead on unlawful handling, trigger pressure and the fatal discharge. The case therefore turned on negligence and unsafe conduct, not on a claim that Nealy meant to kill his uncle.
Nealy’s sentencing under the Youthful Offender Act added another layer to the outcome. He was not treated simply as an older adult defendant, because he was a juvenile when Johnson died and still a young defendant when he pleaded guilty. The act allows certain young offenders to receive a sentence with a defined cap and a correctional structure different from some adult penalties. In this case, the public sentence was described as not exceeding five years. Prosecutors did not announce a trial date after the plea because the guilty plea resolved the case. They also did not announce that any additional person would face charges from the shooting. The court outcome left Nealy with a felony conviction and Johnson’s family with a formal finding of responsibility.
The rural setting of the shooting remained visible through the details released in stages. There was a vehicle, woods, a deer, a pistol and a home near Highway 905. It was not described as a public argument or a robbery. It was a private encounter that became a police call after midnight. That setting may explain why the public record contains few outside voices. There were no widely reported statements from neighbors, no public security video and no crowd of witnesses described in local coverage. The official account rests on the police response, Nealy’s later admission and the solicitor’s description of what happened before the shot.
Johnson’s obituary made clear that his future had been measured in practical projects: lawn work, repairs, additions and family property. The manslaughter case measured the final seconds in legal terms: possession, muzzle direction, trigger pressure and flight. Those two records now sit beside each other. One tells of plans to build. The other tells of how a pistol handed over during a moment in the woods ended those plans. The contrast shaped the public understanding of the case as much as the sentence itself.
Nealy’s plea and sentence remain the last announced court action. Johnson’s family continues to carry the loss of a 20-year-old whose work and home projects were still in front of him.
Author note: Last updated May 7, 2026.