Ariane McCree

Ariane McCree, 28, was shot and killed by a Chester, South Carolina police officer working off-duty security in a Walmart parking lot on November 23, 2019, after being detained for shoplifting a $46 door handle. Officers said McCree, handcuffed behind his back, assaulted an officer, ran to his car, retrieved a gun, and pointed it at officers before they fired roughly two dozen shots; McCree's family disputed this account, saying he was still handcuffed with his hands behind his back when he was killed. The officer who fired was working security off-duty and was not wearing a body camera, and no store surveillance footage captured the shooting itself. The South Carolina Attorney General's Office cleared the officers of state charges in March 2020, and a subsequent federal civil rights review closed without any charges being announced. The involved officers' names were never publicly released, specifically because they were never criminally charged. No one has ever been charged in McCree's death.

Chester, SC · Chester County County

• 2019: Case opens — victim reported missing or found.
• Documented milestones (renewed investigation, media coverage, family advocacy) to be added as sourced.
• Present: case remains unresolved. No named suspect has been convicted.

• The shoplifting detention, the alleged escape, and the shooting, per the South Carolina Attorney General's Office's public findings and body camera footage the Chester Police Department released roughly six months after the shooting.
• A Walmart cashier told investigators McCree took a $46 door handle without paying for it and left, then returned to the store later that morning, where off-duty Chester officers working store security detained and handcuffed him behind his back for shoplifting.
• The Attorney General's Office stated McCree assaulted the detaining officer, ran to his vehicle, and retrieved a firearm despite being handcuffed, then pointed it at the officer, who fired several shots; a second officer arriving to transport McCree to jail also fired after hearing shots and radioed reports of a gun.
• The officer who fired the initial shots was working off-duty as store security and was not wearing a body camera; no Walmart surveillance footage captured the shooting confrontation itself, and investigators relied primarily on officer and witness statements.
• McCree's family and civil rights advocates publicly disputed the official account, maintaining he was still handcuffed with his hands behind his back at the moment he was shot.
• The South Carolina Attorney General's Office announced in March 2020 that its review found the officers acted in self-defense and cleared them of state charges; the officers' names were never publicly released, which the department said was because they faced no criminal charges.
• South Carolina's attorney general separately requested a federal civil rights review by the U.S. Attorney's Office; reporting by the Post and Courier in late 2020 found prosecutors had gone silent on the review's findings, a silence the paper's investigation said suggested the officers would not be federally charged either.
• One of the two officers, later identified in reporting as Harris, was internally disciplined only for failing to activate his body camera during the encounter, not for the shooting itself; both officers remained with the department, and McCree's family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the department.

• Whether McCree was still handcuffed at the moment he was shot, as his family has maintained, or had freed himself and retrieved a weapon, as the officers stated, was never resolved by any independent video evidence, since no body camera or store surveillance footage captured the shooting itself, and was never tested at any criminal trial since none was brought.
• The specific findings of the federal civil rights review referenced by South Carolina's attorney general have never been made public, and reporters were unable to obtain a formal statement of its outcome beyond an inference drawn from prosecutors' silence.
• The full internal disciplinary record for both officers, beyond the one body-camera violation publicly reported, has not been made comprehensively available.

• South Carolina Attorney General's Office — “Officers cleared in Chester Walmart shooting last November”
• The Post and Courier — “Prosecutors silent on federal review of Chester police shooting”
• WCNC Charlotte — “Chester Police Chief aims for transparency in fatal officer-involved shooting”
• Project Cold Case
• Murder Accountability Project
• NamUs