Man convicted of killing Conway Sunhouse employee sentenced to life without parole
By KATHY ROPP
Myhorrynews
A Nichols man found guilty of armed robbery and murder in connection with the killing of a Sunhouse employee more than three years ago reminded the judge that he has two small children who might never know their father, but the judge said the law left him no choice but to sentence him to life in prison without chance of parole.
James Elbert Daniels Jr., 30, apologized to the family of Trisha Stull, who was shot twice in the chest in a robbery at the Sunhouse at the intersection of Oak Street and Cultra Road after she had given them money.
"I wasn't the shooter in this case and I do have two children also who will be losing a father...," he told Circuit Judge Robert E. Hood before the sentencing.
A female-heavy jury convicted Daniels of two counts of armed robbery, one at the Conway Sunhouse and one at the Lake Arrowhead Scotchman, and murder at the Sunhouse, all in 2015. All three crimes are considered violent, most serious in South Carolina.
Daniels also has a previous conviction for kidnapping, dating back to 2005, which is also a violent, most serious crime. Hood said the law is clear and he had no choice about the sentence.
Stull's mom, sister and brother were in the courtroom when the verdicts and sentenced were handed down. They all appeared very emotional, dabbing tears and hugging each other, the prosecutors and an Horry County crime scene investigator.
None of the Stull family wanted to comment after the court recessed.
Daniels' attorney Barbara Pratt told Hood before the sentencing that her client was working two jobs when the Stull killing happened and had a pregnant finance. His two children are now, 8 and 3-years-old.
"I think this is a young man who was trying to get himself away from his brother," she said, adding that he did not pull the trigger in the Stull killing or the slaying of Bala Parachuri, who was killed three weeks before Stull as he worked in the Scotchman on Red Bluff Road in Longs.
Solicitor Jimmy Richardson and Chief Deputy Solicitor Scott Hixson agreed that James Daniels was not inside either store when the killings happened, but they argued that he was an integral part of the killings because he scouted out the stores before the robberies and killings and drove the car that transported the two men who are charged with the shootings.
The trio took Newport cigarettes and $50 in each incident. They also took Stull's purse. Although prosecutors say the pattern was the same in each incident, James Daniels was not tried this week for Parachuri's killing.
Richardson told the jury in his opening statement that there were three men who made up a well-oiled team, even gathering before a crime to talk about how to approach it.
He said James Daniels was the group’s scout. He went into the stores about 30 minutes before the others looking to see how many employees and customers were inside, how the cash register opened and more. Richardson said Daniels chatted with Trisha Stull and flirted with her a little before making a small purchase.
Then he went back to the car and drove away. In the case of the Oak Street Sunhouse, he drove down to the area of Teddy Henry’s auction yard while the robbery and murder were happening before he went back to pick up his accomplices and speed away. That was to avoid having anyone be able to identify the vehicle.
Circuit Judge Robert E. Hood ruled Monday afternoon before the trial started Tuesday morning that the situation warranted a charge of the hand of one is the hand of all, which means the jury wase given the option of finding Daniels guilty of murder even though he wasn’t the one who did the shooting.
Late Tuesday, all of the parties involved agreed not to make forensic pathologist Lee Proctor return Wednesday. Proctor told the group that Stull had two gunshot wounds. One was minor, but the other went into the left side of her chest and through several vital organs, including her aorta. That was the fatal shot, he said.
The parties all agreed to pass this information on to the jury adding that James Daniels was not accused of doing the shooting.
Hood said that videos of the two incidents showed the same people in the same vehicle wearing the same clothes with the same things taken at each convenience store. Hood said the two incidents were glaringly similar, minus a homicide at Lake Arrowhead.
Parachuri was working at the Scotchman on Red Bluff Road near Longs when he was shot multiple times. Again, Hood said, that the two homicides both involved three defendants, the same vehicle, the same murder weapon with the same items taken. He said the incidents followed the same pattern with a man going into the store about 30 minutes before the crimes, then leaving and driving around before heading back. All three locales are gas stations and all of the crimes occurred during the evening hours.
Hood also agreed before the trial began to allow a statement that Daniels made to police to be introduced as evidence in the trial. In the statement, Hood said, Daniels acknowledged that he was a participant in the three crimes.
However, he said he didn’t know the killings were going to happen and all he did was drive.
He also said in his statement that he knew the others had a gun and he saw them come out of the stores with cash.
The others charged in connection with these cases are Daniels’ brother, McKinley Daniels, 37, of Loris and Jerome Jenkins, 24, of Loris. All three have been in jail since their arrests.
Hood also agreed that three letters written by James Daniels to his brother while the two were in jail could be used as evidence in the trial, but a letter written from McKinley to James, found by a jailer in McKinley’s pocket, could be used on only a limited basis in this trial.
Hixson said these letters, and six more, were confiscated by a suspicious jailer.
Hixson said the purpose of the letters was to make sure the brothers had their stories straight.
James Daniels told his brother in one of the letters that he had two jobs and was doing well before he went to jail. He wrote that he participated in the crimes to prove something to his brother.
“You know I always have your back,” Hixson said James Daniels wrote.
Only one sentence in McKinley’s letter back to James was allowed in this trial. Hixson said in that one sentence McKinley Daniels wrote that he knew there were no fingerprints left at the scenes because everything he touched, he took.
It was also pointed out Monday afternoon that James Daniels had previously pleaded guilty to kidnapping. The Horry County Public Index shows that Circuit Judge Edward Cottingham sentenced Daniels to five years in jail on Aug. 10, 2005. He was also give credit for nine months of time served.
Barbara McDowell, the employee who was robbed in the Lake Arrowhead Scotchman, testified Tuesday morning that there had been several robberies around that time.
“It was a quiet night, unusually quiet, and I was nervous,” she said.
She testified that she was in the middle of the store near the front window when she saw two men “scrunched down” outside. At first she thought it was kids playing, but the men, both wearing masks, came in with one going directly behind the counter and the other coming behind her and ushering her to the counter.
She said she noticed only one gun that was being held at the back of her head.
She opened the register and gave the men money, but told them she couldn’t open the safe when they instructed her to.
The men left with about $50 and a handful of cigarettes.
She said one of the men told her if she didn’t go to the register he would shoot her.
In that robbery, there is no video of James Daniels scouting out the scene because police didn’t collect the video as far back as 30 minutes because there was no homicide.
On Wednesday morning, Senior Detective Greg Lent, with the Horry County Police Department’s investigative division, said he had been working the night of Jan. 25, 2015, with an armed robbery task force, along with other officers who were trying to prevent armed robberies from occurring at area convenience stores. They were helping employees close the stores, or making sure they got to their cars safely, among other duties.
Lent testified that when he went to Daniels’ residence to ask some questions, Daniels willingly accompanied Lent to the precinct in Green Sea for further questioning.
The jury listened to an audio recording of the interview for almost an hour, in which Lent pushed Daniels for details on his whereabouts on Jan. 25.
Daniels maintained that he didn’t know what McKinley and Jenkins were doing at the Sunhouse store in Conway. Daniels said after he was flirting with the cashier and went back to the car, McKinley and Daniels weren’t in the car anymore, so he called to find out what was going on. He said they told him to go circle back and pick them up. He said as he turned the car around he heard “two, maybe three” gunshots, but told Lent he “did not know if they actually shot her.”
In a second interview played to the court, Daniels said after the Lake Arrowhead Scotchman incident, but before the trio returned to Conway, he drove to a Hot Spot gas station in the Loris area to get gas.
He said he went inside and paid using cash.
When asked by Lent why he went to the Hot Spot, Daniels said he didn’t know what was going on at that time.
“I do not know why,” he said.
Richardson assured the jury that although McKinley Daniels and Jerome Jenkins aren’t being tried this week that they will have their day in court.
Dates for those trials haven’t been set, according to Richardson.
Prosecutors have formally stated their intentions to seek the death penalty for Jerome Jenkins and, at one point, had stated their intentions to seek the death penalty for McKinley Daniels, but a court ruled that McKinley Daniels was not an appropriate candidate for the death penalty.
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